Day 14

Today we left Cairns for the first time in a week to visit a few Jews in a city about an hour north called Port Douglas. The drive to this city is along a very skinny highway with the mountains on one side and the raging ocean on the other. It was quite hard to concentrate with all the beautiful scenery in front of us. When we arrived we called the other 75 percent of the Jews in Port Douglas (all 10 of them in total) and we realized that only 3 Jews were even willing to see us. So we went first to a Jew who is the owner of the cafe there and we had a long conversation about G-d and Israel and when he brought over his daughter we asked him if it was ok for us to speak to her about the importance of lighting Shabbat candles, he consented. So we spoke to her about how important it was for her to light Shabbat candles every week because she was probably the only Jewish woman in Port Douglas who was lighting them. She then told us that she had just turned 12 only a week before and that we was very proud to be Jewish, even though there weren't any other Jewish children in town. We then told her how the 12th birthday is very important for Jewish girls and we gave her a beautiful candlestick as a Bas Mitzvah gift.

We then visited a Israeli guy who told us that he is closing his shop in Port Douglas because he is moving back to Israel! He told us he doesn't miss a day of Tefilin so we wished him a safe trip back to Israel and bid him farewell.

Back in Cairns tonight---crashed in the driveway (doesn't sound so good, we know) of a friend of ours here...