In one week, Shelanu will be five years old! I can’t believe it myself.

In two weeks, I’ll turn 60 years old. It’s really hard to believe. Is it possible that I’m 60 years old? You know what is even more exciting (not that turning 60 is exciting!)?

In one week, Shelanu will be five years old! I can’t believe it myself.

It was six years ago that I walked into the offices of Israel’s largest cable company, HOT. I had been invited to meet with an executive. He didn’t tell me why he had asked me to come, but I was pretty sure I knew the reason. At the time, I was the Regional Director for GOD TV. I was quite sure that he wanted us to pay him a lot of money to put GOD TV on the air in Israel. Sure enough, after about 45 minutes, that’s what he asked me.

But I told him no! I was not interested in putting GOD TV on in Israel. He was a bit shocked by this. “Why would I want an English-speaking channel in a Hebrew-speaking country?” I asked him. Before he answered, I said, “I would be interested, however, in a Hebrew-speaking channel.” The rest is history.

We’ve been on the air for five years now, and we went live on Israel’s Independence Day, which is May 1 this year.

And as you get older, you have to become more responsible. While GOD TV is still our primary partner, a couple years ago, we became an independent Israeli ministry. We felt there was prophetic importance in that. And now we have a bigger challenge. A local Israeli ministry graciously gave us office space for the past five years. However, they’ve had to leave the space they were renting for a smaller office area. We have an opportunity to lease offices and a studio that is ideal for Shelanu in the same building. But we’re going to need our partners to step up to make this a reality. To be clear, we’re not 100% sure that this is the direction we’re going to move in, so right now I’m just asking you to pray for our board that we would have the mind of the Lord.

Over the past five years, we have seen Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, come to faith in Yeshua. We have sent hundreds of Hebrew New Testaments to those who have asked for them. And my book, Identity Theft, was translated into Hebrew, and we have sent hundreds of copies of that as well.

When you stand with Shelanu, you are standing for the gospel going forth in Hebrew. Hebrew was a dead language about 150 years ago. It only survived because it is the language of the Bible, and devout Jews continued to pray in Hebrew. But it was not a spoken language. The first child in about 2,000 years to have Hebrew as his first language was the son of the father of modern-day Hebrew. Eliezer Ben Yehuda came from Lithuania with his wife and determined to make Hebrew the language of the soon-to-be-born Jewish state. There was tremendous resistance. The Orthodox community excommunicated him from Judaism. They felt that Hebrew was a holy language only for prayer and Bible reading. But he didn’t give up.

And we’re not giving up at Shelanu TV! And I’m so grateful that we’re not alone. We have amazing partners, like you, all over the world who have bought into this vision. You are as zealous as I am to see Yeshua preached in Hebrew. I am personally amazed that wherever I go in the world—from Singapore to Europe—people I’ve never met ask me, “How is Shelanu doing?”

Please consider a special gift this May for Shelanu TV in honor of her fifth anniversary. Thanks to our amazing partners, Israelis are hearing about the life-changing power of Messiah Yeshua in their own language. Thank you—Toda Raba!