Establishing the Beginning of the Village

The first information from Nes Ammim dated from the beginning of this year… The reason of our silence since, was a serious delay in the plans to start the building of the village in Israel. This was because of the very slow progress in establishing the organisations in Germany and the USA... This put Switzerland and Holland under heavy financial pressure.

Nevertheless construction in Israel has taken place. At this moment there are 14 people with two children. These first workers are pioneers in the real meaning of the word. The land is totally barren, trees have still to be planted, there is no road yet, no water, no electricity. On the hill where the village will be built there are now six primitive barracks of pre-prepared concrete plates. One of them is storage / kitchen / dining room / community room / office at the same time, another one is washing place / laundry / toilets. In the other four live the inhabitants. Furthermore, there is a barrack for the carpentry and a barrack for the flower packing.

From May till November not a single drop of rain is to be expected and the sun burns the land. On the building area are lots of stones and underneath the stones: scorpions, as it is usual in any building area. 'So, watch out! is the slogan.
Now, the paths of access to Nes Ammim are dry and hard. In winter, on the contrary, when heavy rains fall, the situation is quite different. The paths are from time to time changed into mud tracks, in which even a tractor can sink away half a meter. We have been able to experience last winter that during these periods the site is virtually isolated and cut off for any vehicle. Fortunately our neighbours helped us out. As one of our workers, Arie van Tol, wrote last winter: “Recently we have been fighting against the mud again. Our tractor sunk into the mud and the caterpillar of Kibbutz Shomrat had to help us out. Steal cables and chains broke before they could get us out!”

So last winter made it very clear that our very first priority will have to be a road. At this moment workers from the district work hard to get it done before November, when the autumn rains are expected again.
In our pioneer group, the women care for the household affairs; the men work the land (wheat, cotton, sorghum (for chicken food), and melons.
The cotton looks good, but a mice plague has destroyed at least one third of the wheat harvest. The small group works hard. At the same time we have to work out a form of community life: finding spiritual ways to live together. For indeed, isn’t the aim of Nes Ammim to live together as Christians of different backgrounds, in service to the State of Israel and in so doing to live our being Christians?
After every day’s work we have a small evening service during which we read the Bible in two languages (German and English) and have a meditation. On the problems connected with community life people have lively discussions right now. This community life will take gradually more of a specific form, as the population of Nes Ammim will be growing.
When that time is there we will inform you about the development.

Plans: We almost fear to write about the future. The short history of Nes Ammim has again and again confirmed that we can make plans, but God directs us differently. Our plans and schemes up to now have not really gone into the waste paper basket, it’s true, but the deadlines most of the time proved to be wrong. There are too many factors playing, political, psychological, organisational, in order to rely on a specific scheme. Time and again Nes Ammim proves itself to be a job one has to believe in, to be executed however with a sense for realities. The finances we so badly need for the start of our definite, fast building of the place, have up to now not be forth coming. And for the moment this is our most serious problem. For the pioneers who applied can come only when machines and materials are available for them.