A very happy and healthy new year to all my Friends

My dear Friends

In 1989 I was in Amsterdam for my first real Christmas and New year with two very close friends I had met in Israel in the summer of that year-Liesbeth and Chava. I remember that I was in Chava's mother's house in New Year's Eve. People lit bonfires in the street and my friend was playing the piano. As the bells of midnight struck, I could actually feel the year 'turning' and another close friend back in england came very strongly into my mind.

This will be my third New year in 2013. The first was the Jewish new Year for Trees, on which The Little Sisters of Joy commemorates its anniversary-2014 will be its 15th birthday. A gathering of friends met in (yes you know its my favourite hotel) the Regent Hotel in Cambridge, among them Methodists and Catholics, who were meeting each other for the first time. I gave a little speech about the progress of the Project and we all had tea and cakes and chatted happily. We will do it all over again this coming January, with a few different people this time, with hopefully a lady from the American Orthodox Church.

Then there was my trip to Toronto in June, highly successful and quite emotional for me for as you know I really love the place and hope to return many times in the future. A visit is already planned for September 2015, when my friend Sarah will accompany me and I will show her the beauties of the city, before she goes travelling. And I have a little event in store at that time, which i will reveal to you nearer the time.

In September I celebrated the Jewish new Year, Rosh Hashanah with two dear Friends, Marcellus and Ivona, who celebrated their wedding just two weeks ago. W e were joined by a Russian friend and her daughter and the food and the good will flowed!

Let us hope and pray that this beautiful and creative period will flow into 2014, that Where the Woods meet the Water will be published as planned on 19th october 2014 and that i can keep on singing! No time for a Concert this coming year i fear, but Sue is keen to do another one and lets hope for Spring 2015.

I don't mind planning if I feel it is God'w work-anyhow i was brought up to it as I am the proud daughter of a Jewish businesman!

Every blessing, health and happiness
Go safely wherever you go
Love and shalom
Gila

Happy birthday Gila

My dear Friends

Yesterday i celebrated one of the best birthdays I have ever had. To begin with I discovered, being 62, that i had spent exactly half of my life, thirty one years,in Cambridge. when i came here in 1982 I did not know even one person, but my life changed took off and changed forever when i started on a course at what is now Anglia Ruskin University and what was then known fondly as the Tech.

I think I have grown and matured as a human being in those thirty one years. You may recall that I was unhappy in my twenties and although exciting revolutions were going on around me in the sixties and early seventies, it was a rasher dark period in my life.One good thing though-the music. It was then I learnt to sing and play the guitar in a way that was to carry me through the res of my life and form the basis of the Concerts for Peace and Reconciliation that I have been doing for the last eleven years.

I received many cards from old and new friends yesterday and was showered with affection.I started the day with prayers with the Methodists in Wesley, as I usually do on a Wednesday morning. at coffee in a cafe afterwards, Angela the minister's wife, bought me hot chocolate with a huge amount of cream, which was a great start to all the eating I was to do. for this was quickly followed by a wonderful lunch in the double Tree hotel by the river, where my Canadian friend and i watched the mist turn into lunchtime sunshine. We ate and talked of many things, including Canada, which as you know is my spiritual home.

Later in the Regent Hotel my friends there gave me a beautiful card with some very touching words and a bottle of my favorite tipple-brandy, and very special stuff it was too.

2014 beckons and there are many things to look forward to. Top priority is getting my second little memoir into the light. I thank the Lord for all he has brought and ask him for the strength to continue.

May you all be truly blessed at this holy and special season.
Shalom from Gila