Dear Families,
This weekend we are celebrating one of our greatest victories. As I write this, we have 350 BFL couples in Eilat, 700 precious souls, who have come to our annual couples retreat. A year ago, we canceled the couples retreat because of the war; this weekend, we gathered together to laugh, cry, dance, honor each other, and deepen our marriages. What greater victory is there than to celebrate building Jewish families in Israel? Every couple that is married and every child that is born is another victory and builds our future of Am Yisrael.

I want to share the unbelievable story of just one of our couples, Amit and Motty Sultan. They are the first husband and wife who were both injured on while serving on October 7th, and what I”m about to share is a story for the ages.
Amit and Motty are 34, have 3 beautiful children, and live in the southern city of Ofakim, not far from Beersheva. Amit is an officer in the border police, and in the early morning of 10/7, she was on patrol in Re’im, not far from the Nova Festival. When the horrible attack on Nova began, her unit was called to Nova, and on the way, Amit and her team were ambushed, and a huge bullet from a heavy machine gun struck Amit. She managed to crawl under a bush off of the side of the road and immediately messaged Motty, who was at home with the children.
At 7:00am in the morning, Motty suddenly received the following message from Amit.
“My Love. They shot me.” and she sent her location by WhatsApp.
Can you imagine what it was like for Motty to hear a message like this? Motty immediately jumped into action, grabbed his weapon, and flew into his jeep to get from his home to Yamit within 20 minutes. What Motty encountered was a full scale attack by Hamas. This 20-minute drive took 5 hours as Motty fought through scores of terrorists to get to Yamit and save his wife. During this battle, Motty took weapons and ammunition from fallen soldiers to continue fighting. At one point he received this message from Yamit who lay badly wounded.

“My love, I intend to return alive, but I need a favor. Please know that I love you and our children. Protect them.”
Motty did everything in his power to race toward Yamit. During the process, he was ambushed again. He was able to take down a number of terrorists, and at one point, a bullet hit the top of his head. With blood running down his head, Motty ran on foot and under heavy fire to a dried river bed.
“I’m coming my love, stay hidden. I’m coming”.
Motty fought through the next 9 kilometers by foot until finally he reached Yamit as one of his soldiers came with a car. During this time, Motty lost consciousness several times. Amazingly, Motty was able to drive himself and Yamit to Soroka hospital, under fire, where the hospital began to treat them both.

You all know the rest of the story. They soon met BFL mentors in the hospital and joined this family of lions as the first BFL husband and wife injured together. Motty is back commanding his unit, and Yamit and Motty were meant to join our couples retreat, but complications from her injury forced Yamit back to the hospital. We are holding a spot for them next year, and their story of love and commitment inspires all of us.
As Shabbat nears, please know how grateful we are and connected we feel to all of you. You are helping to enable great healing to take place for our those who have given of themselves to protect Israel. This incredible couples retreat is just one example.
Shabbat Shalom From Israel,
Yaniv