So today we had our first field trip outside of the JC. This is what they called a 3/4 trip because we were back and done by about 3pm. We have full day ones coming, as well aas some 16 hour field trips from what I hear, so yeah, great times. The purpose of the trips this time was to help get us oriented to the land around Jerusalem, trying to see some of the other Bible locations that are around this area. We made 5 stops on this trip, each to a historical location, or a place where you could see sites from history. This was also one of the few trips that we get to take into the West Bank, so we treasured our time here since we don't get to come very often.
Our first stop was the 7 Arches Hotel Overlook and which you can see the Old City from the south east corner. Probably the most impressive thing about this view is the cemetaries that cover this part of the Mt. of Olives. There are so many people that are and have been buried here. For the Jews this is an 'active cemetary' which means that after a while, the bones of a person are removed from thier grave and a new person is laid to rest there. The bones are taken then to a common family tomb elsewhere. This is called being 'removed to your fathers' and is a way for many people to get the chance to be buried on this sacred spot of land. On Mt Moriah just across the Kidron Valley is another cemetary, but this one is muslim. It stands right in front of the Temple Mount and was put there by the muslims to keep out the Jews since walking through a muslim cemetary would make them unclean. What a way to live eh?
We then went to Augusta Victoria, a church/hospital which was built by Kaiser Wilhelm and named after his wife. This is an amazing Byzantine style church with a tower that overlooks much of the land surrounding. This is built as an ascension chruch, although it is the least likley of any of the ascension churches around. It is on the highest part of the Mt. of Olives and there are 210 steps to get to the top of the tower. It is one of the three towers that you can use to orient yourself to directions around here. The church has great mosaics that cover the ceilings and an altar ment to symbolize the place of the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple, even to the point where noone is allowed to step on the last step of the altar except the priest of the church. The bells ring at noon and harmonize with the 2 other german churches in the area, making for quite the sound anywhere in the Old City at lunch time.
Our third stop was at a place called Nabi Samwil, or the place of the prophet Samuel. As such a place, it is claimed by both Jews and Muslims and each has a holy place inside this old crusader church, one each with it's own cenotaph to worship at. This is also why is is not kept up very well, because noone knows who is supposed to take care of what, so nothing gets done. This church stands upson Mt. Joy, called this because it was the first place that people making the pilgramage during the crusades could see the Holy City. There is quite the view from the top of this chruch as well. You can look into the Benjamin Plateau where there are many tells (remants of the original ancient cities) such as Tell Gibeon. From this view you can also see the Ailjalon Valley where Joshua made the sun stand still so that he could finish fighting! It was amzing so realize how close all of this stuff happened to one another. I don't know if Joshua realized that he was only 5 miles away from what would later become the capitol of his faith. Anyway, that is what was cool about here.
Fourth was Deir Mar Elyas, or the Elias Monastery. We did not get to go in this building, but we went on the hill behind which is called Sheperds Hill. This had a neat overlook becuase on the one side you could see Jerusalem, and then to the south was the city of Bethlehem. The hill that i was standing on could have very well been one of the hills that angels apeared to shepherd on during the birth of Christ. Also in sight of the hill was the place where David was born (of course) and the begining of the story of Ruth was here. It was quite the inspiring sight and a little odd too since Bethlehem is on the other side of the separation wall in the West Bank, so we only get to go there once. The experince here was helped alot by the fact that our teachers had aranged for a real shepherd to come and meet with us! He had a little lamb that the girls loved to hold, and the guys put over thier shoulders, just like you see in all the Jesus paintings! I also got a photo with the shepherd guy and all of his sheep. It was a pretty awsome experince.
To wrap up the day we ended with one of the more spiritual stops, at least for our group. To the south and east of Jerusalem there is a place called Haas Promenade Overlook. This vantange point is unique because you have the Kidron Valley coming striaght at you, and so on the outside the wall closest to you is the City of David, or what would have been Salem. The little villiage would have been just south from the peak of Mt. Moriah. As we enjoyed the view from this point (and this was in the West Bank as well so we will never go back there) our teacher had us open to Gen 22. As we read the account of Abraham going to sacrifice his son Isaac, we realized that this was the very spot from which Abraham saw the mount "from afar off." This is the first place to look into the valley from the direction we was coming, and thinking of that, the fact that this was the place he would have left his caravan as he took his son to be a sacrifice in obedience to the Lord, was an awe inspiring thought. It was very humbling to stand where one of the great patriarchs would have stood.
Anyway, that was the great chunk of our day. I need to get to class, this day is not going to be the most exciting, that's for sure, but there is much to learn!! Love you all!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Walls of Jerusalem
The walls of Jerusalem are a wonderful place to get and know the Old city, and also the people that live within it. Today was a free day, so we got a sack lunch at breakfast and then we got to do whatever we wanted for the rest of the day. We all have TONS of reading to do for our classes (over 150 pages), so we knew that we were going to have to make time for that today, but our priority was to get out into the city! So a group of us all left at about 930am and started out towards the Old City to walk the ramparts.
Starting in Jaffa gate, you can take a walk around all of the walls surrounding in the Old City, except for the parts
that are around the temple mount, so you have to take each section on it's own. 8 shekles ($2 ish) to get up there, and alot of time! The city itself is about a mile square, and so you end up walking almost 4 miles to get around the whole thing, but it was worth it. Not only does it give you the chance to see all that is in the Old city from a new angle, but also the things that are right outside the wall. We went on the southern circut first, which takes you from Jaffa gate to the Dung gate, which takes you down by the Armenian Quarter. Alot of the wonderful churches that I want to be able to see while I am here were in this part of the city, as well as many neat graveyards. Walking on the walls themselves and just thinking about how it would be to have to defned the city itself was really cool. The walls are so thick in places and you can just imaging being shot at, or shooting, through the wall.
The Dung Gate is the entrance to one of the most seen walls in Jerusalem, the Western or Wailing Wall. You have to go through security (a metal detector and search) to get to the wall, but when you see it for the first time, it really is a humbling place. It is separated into a women's and men's side, and the man have to be wearing some sort of head covering in order to go near the wall. They actually have little yamaka's for people to use if they don't have one, so we each got one and went in to see this holy site. It.JPG)
was not very crowded today, the womens side was much more crowded, but they also dont' have as much wall space. To see all the Jewish men, young and old (6 to 75) at the wall, praying, some ricking back and forth as they did so, and many just touching the walls and praying, was an awsome sight. Along with the head coverings there were some who had wrapped themselves with a long tether and had put on thier phylacteries. When we asked one of the men what the wrapping was for, he responded, "we do not know. We do it because Moses told us to." I really respect all the those faithful Jewish followers who worship at the wall withso much faith. It is neat too because on the mens side are a few caves and there are little libraries inside of them. I don't know exactly what books were there, it was all in Hebrew, but I think that they were mostly prayer books, as well as some actual scrolls of scripture. Again, as we left, I felt a humbling awe at the things that I was able to witness there. 
To get to the northern half of the wall, you have to walk back through the city to Jaffa gate, and so off we went. The other side was interesting because you actually got to look into peoples yards that lived in the Old City and see what thier life was like. To call it a yard is not really right, but these people have really made this place home. There were even a few schools on the upper levels of the city, and a dirt soccer field with a buch of school kids playing. It was neat to have this little window into the lives of the people that we are going to meet every day here.
We ended near the entrance to the Dome of the Rock, which only Muslims now can enter ( i hope they change that while i'm here!) and so we left out of Lion's gate and headed down to the Chruch of all Nations and the Garden of Gethsemane. There is a Greek Orthodox church down there that own a place that is belived to be one of the places where Mary was lain after her death. Not being as popular, we actually waited in line to see the inside of the shrine. We then went to the Church of All Nations itself, which has a rock in which they belive Jesus prayed before he was arrrested and betrayed. This is a very quiet chruch and none of the noise from outside was able to penetrate this holy place. Next to the chruch are some of the oldest olive trees that still stand in the area. One can only wonder if one of them could somehow be related to the tree that we all respect and love.
The rest of our day was spent in study. We did have to give our legs and our skin a rest (don't worry, i have been wearing my sunblock!). The only other activity that we had was watching the Israeli Opera who came to the center for the JC's concert series. It was a wonderful performace to say the least. Anyway, I have to get going. We have a first feidl trip to go on today, and I don't want to be late! Love you all!
Starting in Jaffa gate, you can take a walk around all of the walls surrounding in the Old City, except for the parts
that are around the temple mount, so you have to take each section on it's own. 8 shekles ($2 ish) to get up there, and alot of time! The city itself is about a mile square, and so you end up walking almost 4 miles to get around the whole thing, but it was worth it. Not only does it give you the chance to see all that is in the Old city from a new angle, but also the things that are right outside the wall. We went on the southern circut first, which takes you from Jaffa gate to the Dung gate, which takes you down by the Armenian Quarter. Alot of the wonderful churches that I want to be able to see while I am here were in this part of the city, as well as many neat graveyards. Walking on the walls themselves and just thinking about how it would be to have to defned the city itself was really cool. The walls are so thick in places and you can just imaging being shot at, or shooting, through the wall.The Dung Gate is the entrance to one of the most seen walls in Jerusalem, the Western or Wailing Wall. You have to go through security (a metal detector and search) to get to the wall, but when you see it for the first time, it really is a humbling place. It is separated into a women's and men's side, and the man have to be wearing some sort of head covering in order to go near the wall. They actually have little yamaka's for people to use if they don't have one, so we each got one and went in to see this holy site. It
.JPG)
was not very crowded today, the womens side was much more crowded, but they also dont' have as much wall space. To see all the Jewish men, young and old (6 to 75) at the wall, praying, some ricking back and forth as they did so, and many just touching the walls and praying, was an awsome sight. Along with the head coverings there were some who had wrapped themselves with a long tether and had put on thier phylacteries. When we asked one of the men what the wrapping was for, he responded, "we do not know. We do it because Moses told us to." I really respect all the those faithful Jewish followers who worship at the wall withso much faith. It is neat too because on the mens side are a few caves and there are little libraries inside of them. I don't know exactly what books were there, it was all in Hebrew, but I think that they were mostly prayer books, as well as some actual scrolls of scripture. Again, as we left, I felt a humbling awe at the things that I was able to witness there. 
To get to the northern half of the wall, you have to walk back through the city to Jaffa gate, and so off we went. The other side was interesting because you actually got to look into peoples yards that lived in the Old City and see what thier life was like. To call it a yard is not really right, but these people have really made this place home. There were even a few schools on the upper levels of the city, and a dirt soccer field with a buch of school kids playing. It was neat to have this little window into the lives of the people that we are going to meet every day here.
We ended near the entrance to the Dome of the Rock, which only Muslims now can enter ( i hope they change that while i'm here!) and so we left out of Lion's gate and headed down to the Chruch of all Nations and the Garden of Gethsemane. There is a Greek Orthodox church down there that own a place that is belived to be one of the places where Mary was lain after her death. Not being as popular, we actually waited in line to see the inside of the shrine. We then went to the Church of All Nations itself, which has a rock in which they belive Jesus prayed before he was arrrested and betrayed. This is a very quiet chruch and none of the noise from outside was able to penetrate this holy place. Next to the chruch are some of the oldest olive trees that still stand in the area. One can only wonder if one of them could somehow be related to the tree that we all respect and love.
The rest of our day was spent in study. We did have to give our legs and our skin a rest (don't worry, i have been wearing my sunblock!). The only other activity that we had was watching the Israeli Opera who came to the center for the JC's concert series. It was a wonderful performace to say the least. Anyway, I have to get going. We have a first feidl trip to go on today, and I don't want to be late! Love you all!
Saturday, May 1, 2010
My first Shabbat
Shabbat shalom everyone! You know what is great? Singing a sacrament song about the sacrifice that Jesus made for us, and being able to see the place where is happened by looking up from your hymnbook! Really, that is a wonderful feeling and a little distracting at times as well! In fact we learned today, the the archetect for the building when he was taking people on a tour soon after if was finished was asked about all of the big windows the he put in. "Won't that be a distraction to the students as they try and listen to the professors?" they asked. He replied, "well, then they can become poets instead!" What a great view on life! Sacrament services were packed today because of a buch of tour group that all ened up being here at the same time. We had 60 over the amout that our branch president was expecting, meaning that we had ~425 people at chruch today! How's that compared to all ya'll?! Being a testimony meeting the spirit was very strong and it was so easy just to feel the love and the unity that all of the people had for one another. It was also great because in sunday school our teacher had been living here for a while, and so as we are going through the Old Testament, she was able to offer a few neat insights from this culture, and my priesthood teacher is a studenet at Hebrew University and so he was able to offer neat linguistic insights into the topic that we were talking about. Overall it was a great church experince.
Anyway, other than that, the day was a normal day. We had a fireside about the creating of the Jerusalem center and all of the many struggles that they were able to overcome to build this wonderful facility. You can really see that the hand of the Lord was in the making of this place and that He really wanted it to get done. Elder Holland said that the Lord had kept this piece of land set aside for thousands of years to make sure that the JC could be built in our time. We are now a great symbol of peace here as we have both Jews and Arabs working here as friends in a community that cannot even have them ride the same bus at the same time. This place truly is a miracle.
Anyway, I hope that you all are having fun reading. I just uploaded a few pics to my earlier posts so that you can see a little of what I get to see. Tomorrow is a free day and so i'm sure that I will have lots of advertures to tell you about then!
Anyway, other than that, the day was a normal day. We had a fireside about the creating of the Jerusalem center and all of the many struggles that they were able to overcome to build this wonderful facility. You can really see that the hand of the Lord was in the making of this place and that He really wanted it to get done. Elder Holland said that the Lord had kept this piece of land set aside for thousands of years to make sure that the JC could be built in our time. We are now a great symbol of peace here as we have both Jews and Arabs working here as friends in a community that cannot even have them ride the same bus at the same time. This place truly is a miracle.
Anyway, I hope that you all are having fun reading. I just uploaded a few pics to my earlier posts so that you can see a little of what I get to see. Tomorrow is a free day and so i'm sure that I will have lots of advertures to tell you about then!
Friday, April 30, 2010
Classes In Jerusalem
So today wasn't the most exciting when thinking about the tourism things to do, but today was the first real doy of classes. I can tell that the classes here are going to be a great
learning tool, a great opportunity to learn the culture of the scriptrues. We had a quiz today and 10 questions later we learned that this is not going to be our normal religion class. We have one term to go through the entire OT, and not only do we need to learn the scripture text, but also have to know the geography of the whole story. I really do like the idea of taking advantage of the resource as we are here, and I look forward to when I get home being able to visualize the actual site as i read about it. All of our classes are based around the place in which I am going to live in the next few months, and the field trips are a large part of the curriculum as well.
We did venture into the Old City on our own today for the first time today
and while a little intinidating at first to be on our own in the city, the group I was with has a lot of fun. The top picture is me on top of the Austrian hospice looking over the Old City. We really just went into the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchure and spent almost two hours there looking at all of the amazing icons and Byzentine style mosaics and adorned the whole place. It was really crowded of course, I have yet to actually go into the tomb site, but I got to walk up Cavalry (stairs at right) and see the altar that was built up there for the site of Christ's death (right and bottom). It was sortof fun to look at the mosaics on the ceiling and play the 'which prophet is this' game while trying to look for clues in the picture. Jonah was quite the site! But it was very humbling to see all of the people that treat all of those sites with great reverence. So many different divisions in the Church itself, and so many different types of belief, and yet they are able to keep a tense peace because of the sacred ground that they all want to share. It is actually odd how the feelings there in the small chruch mirror the larger feelings of the city as a whole.
On the way back there was these really annoying Palestinean boys who were trying to sell us these littl
e things of gum or candy or something, but they would just stand in front of one of us in the group, yelling something over and over again wanting us i'm sure to buy what he had, and he just woudln't go away! I need to learn the Arabic for 'no' and 'get out of here' becuase we really were not communicating very well! Lucky for us this Arab behind us told the boy off for us and we went away, but then he had this friend that he called to and he started to do the same thing, except he had a rock that we would pretend to throw at as when we said no. I don't know if you will belive it, but I didn't flinch at all when he pretened to throw the rock, and so I think that is why he left, but man I just wanted to drop-kick the kid! One of them did actually throw a rock that almost hit one of the girls I was with, that was irking if nothing else, but yeah. I think that we are going to get to know how to deal with things like that pretty fast if we are going to be walking that way often!
Well, church is tomorrow. We have sabbath with the Jews here, and then we get Sunday as our day off, so this will be interesting, but I think that i'm going to like this idea in the long run.
learning tool, a great opportunity to learn the culture of the scriptrues. We had a quiz today and 10 questions later we learned that this is not going to be our normal religion class. We have one term to go through the entire OT, and not only do we need to learn the scripture text, but also have to know the geography of the whole story. I really do like the idea of taking advantage of the resource as we are here, and I look forward to when I get home being able to visualize the actual site as i read about it. All of our classes are based around the place in which I am going to live in the next few months, and the field trips are a large part of the curriculum as well.We did venture into the Old City on our own today for the first time today
and while a little intinidating at first to be on our own in the city, the group I was with has a lot of fun. The top picture is me on top of the Austrian hospice looking over the Old City. We really just went into the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchure and spent almost two hours there looking at all of the amazing icons and Byzentine style mosaics and adorned the whole place. It was really crowded of course, I have yet to actually go into the tomb site, but I got to walk up Cavalry (stairs at right) and see the altar that was built up there for the site of Christ's death (right and bottom). It was sortof fun to look at the mosaics on the ceiling and play the 'which prophet is this' game while trying to look for clues in the picture. Jonah was quite the site! But it was very humbling to see all of the people that treat all of those sites with great reverence. So many different divisions in the Church itself, and so many different types of belief, and yet they are able to keep a tense peace because of the sacred ground that they all want to share. It is actually odd how the feelings there in the small chruch mirror the larger feelings of the city as a whole.On the way back there was these really annoying Palestinean boys who were trying to sell us these littl
e things of gum or candy or something, but they would just stand in front of one of us in the group, yelling something over and over again wanting us i'm sure to buy what he had, and he just woudln't go away! I need to learn the Arabic for 'no' and 'get out of here' becuase we really were not communicating very well! Lucky for us this Arab behind us told the boy off for us and we went away, but then he had this friend that he called to and he started to do the same thing, except he had a rock that we would pretend to throw at as when we said no. I don't know if you will belive it, but I didn't flinch at all when he pretened to throw the rock, and so I think that is why he left, but man I just wanted to drop-kick the kid! One of them did actually throw a rock that almost hit one of the girls I was with, that was irking if nothing else, but yeah. I think that we are going to get to know how to deal with things like that pretty fast if we are going to be walking that way often!Well, church is tomorrow. We have sabbath with the Jews here, and then we get Sunday as our day off, so this will be interesting, but I think that i'm going to like this idea in the long run.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Old City
So today I did wake up to the 430am call to prayer. It wasn't quite as loud as everyone said it was, at least it didn't seem that way to me, but yeah. I woke up enough to think 'oh, the call to prayer. That's nice.' before falling back to sleep! This jet lag thing hasn't been too bad, but enough that I enjoy my sleep at night. Not to mention the fact that breakfast was at 630 this morning, and orentation was for the first hour... that was boring. The exciting stuff happened at 830am when we finally got to get out of the Center for the first time and take our journey into the Old City.
This first trip was guided by a member of the staff here and our guide was Bro. Emmet who knew the city pretty well becuase he had done some grad work here back in the day. But we walked down from the center (which is on Mt. Scopus according to the Jews, and on the Mt. of Olives according to the Arabs, so there ya go Ellen!) and went through the Arab section of town with it's shops and street vendors, met the money changer that we will be using for getting our $ changed to NIS, and went on into the Old city through Damascas Gate.
Now I don't think that i'm going to go into many specifics, because i'm going to be going there alot, and i think that I would just make a fool out of myself trying to remeber everything that I went to today, but i'll try to give you some general impressions that I had, and well as a crazy experince that happened today. This is a picture of the shops right as you enter Damascus Gate.
First of all, the Jerusalem that you see in your minds eye as you read the scriptures is nothing compared to what is there today. Even the walls around the Old City are so much bigger and misplaced from where they were in Christs time, not to mention that the whole city is about 30 feet higher than it used to be in places, although you still can walk on some stones that Jesus walked in certain parts of the city. It is a very crowded town, filled with merchants, pilgrims from all sorts of denominations, and a small military presence that you see from time to time. We actually saw two Palestinian soldiers with M-16 type guns standi
ng in the street as we came out of the Austrian Hospice. That was neat.
We also got to go into the Church of the Holy Sepulchure (in pic to right) and see one of the sites for the tomb and crusifixion of Christ. It was such a busy place, so many christians from all over the world, so many languages, and yet so much respect there. The line was really long just to go into the place where they have built a shrine over the tomb that it was amazing. I think that is one of the things that caught me off guard, just how loud all these places are with all of the people. You think about all of these sacred places, and you see them in church movies, but you never think about how many other people see them as sacred as well, and so how busy the places really are during a normal day. Even the Garden Tome site is riddled with tourists throughout the whole day, and so you have to go early in the morning, or later in the evening to get the place more to yourself. I am glad though to be here for a while. Geting to know the people here is going to make this experince so much better than just coming to see all of the sites for a week or two, and i'm really lookking forward to all of the things that I can learn from the natives.
So there was a little disterbance in one of the streets today. A truck was in the middle of the very narrow streets in the city, and so only like 1 1/2 people could fit on either side of it. The group that I was with got separated because three of us couldn't find a way through the growing crowd. It didn't help at all that we were on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Suffering that is the traditional way that Christ carried the cross, and so there was this christiam group that was carrying a cross also trying to get through while singing thier traditional songs that they have for the points of the Way. Then this crazy lady starts pulling things out of the truck, looking at them, (leaves and herbs it looked like), passing them off, throwing them back in, and yelling at people the whole time. She was quite talented though because she was not a small lady and she could really weave through the crowd, I dont know how she did it! Anyway, some Israeli guards came over, the woman started yelling at them, they yelled back, and then they got in the truck and drove off, parting the crowd as they went! It was a little nuts, but we got back to our group OK.
We ended our little tour in West Jerusalem, and went to Ben Gurion st. which is the main shopping thoroughfare for the Jews. Lots of cool stuff, and pretty cheap too, at least that is what the girls I was with told me! So yeah, such ended our day in the Old City. I am going to have fun getting lost in there in the next few months! That's what they told us to do so that we could learn it, and learn it I will. Classes start tomorrow, so I better get going, but I hope that you guys are learning something from me! Feel free to ask me questions if you want and I will do my best to answer them. Tomorrow we get our first free time that we can use out of the Center. We can't go into the Old City till 3pm though, but that is still enough time to get some stuff done! Wish me luck!
This first trip was guided by a member of the staff here and our guide was Bro. Emmet who knew the city pretty well becuase he had done some grad work here back in the day. But we walked down from the center (which is on Mt. Scopus according to the Jews, and on the Mt. of Olives according to the Arabs, so there ya go Ellen!) and went through the Arab section of town with it's shops and street vendors, met the money changer that we will be using for getting our $ changed to NIS, and went on into the Old city through Damascas Gate.
Now I don't think that i'm going to go into many specifics, because i'm going to be going there alot, and i think that I would just make a fool out of myself trying to remeber everything that I went to today, but i'll try to give you some general impressions that I had, and well as a crazy experince that happened today. This is a picture of the shops right as you enter Damascus Gate.First of all, the Jerusalem that you see in your minds eye as you read the scriptures is nothing compared to what is there today. Even the walls around the Old City are so much bigger and misplaced from where they were in Christs time, not to mention that the whole city is about 30 feet higher than it used to be in places, although you still can walk on some stones that Jesus walked in certain parts of the city. It is a very crowded town, filled with merchants, pilgrims from all sorts of denominations, and a small military presence that you see from time to time. We actually saw two Palestinian soldiers with M-16 type guns standi
ng in the street as we came out of the Austrian Hospice. That was neat.We also got to go into the Church of the Holy Sepulchure (in pic to right) and see one of the sites for the tomb and crusifixion of Christ. It was such a busy place, so many christians from all over the world, so many languages, and yet so much respect there. The line was really long just to go into the place where they have built a shrine over the tomb that it was amazing. I think that is one of the things that caught me off guard, just how loud all these places are with all of the people. You think about all of these sacred places, and you see them in church movies, but you never think about how many other people see them as sacred as well, and so how busy the places really are during a normal day. Even the Garden Tome site is riddled with tourists throughout the whole day, and so you have to go early in the morning, or later in the evening to get the place more to yourself. I am glad though to be here for a while. Geting to know the people here is going to make this experince so much better than just coming to see all of the sites for a week or two, and i'm really lookking forward to all of the things that I can learn from the natives.
So there was a little disterbance in one of the streets today. A truck was in the middle of the very narrow streets in the city, and so only like 1 1/2 people could fit on either side of it. The group that I was with got separated because three of us couldn't find a way through the growing crowd. It didn't help at all that we were on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Suffering that is the traditional way that Christ carried the cross, and so there was this christiam group that was carrying a cross also trying to get through while singing thier traditional songs that they have for the points of the Way. Then this crazy lady starts pulling things out of the truck, looking at them, (leaves and herbs it looked like), passing them off, throwing them back in, and yelling at people the whole time. She was quite talented though because she was not a small lady and she could really weave through the crowd, I dont know how she did it! Anyway, some Israeli guards came over, the woman started yelling at them, they yelled back, and then they got in the truck and drove off, parting the crowd as they went! It was a little nuts, but we got back to our group OK.
We ended our little tour in West Jerusalem, and went to Ben Gurion st. which is the main shopping thoroughfare for the Jews. Lots of cool stuff, and pretty cheap too, at least that is what the girls I was with told me! So yeah, such ended our day in the Old City. I am going to have fun getting lost in there in the next few months! That's what they told us to do so that we could learn it, and learn it I will. Classes start tomorrow, so I better get going, but I hope that you guys are learning something from me! Feel free to ask me questions if you want and I will do my best to answer them. Tomorrow we get our first free time that we can use out of the Center. We can't go into the Old City till 3pm though, but that is still enough time to get some stuff done! Wish me luck!
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
A Long Day with Great Expectations
I made it to Jerusalem!!! After quite the grueling flight over here, I was actually part of the first group to get to the Jerusalem Center this afternoon. It was a little crazy, thinking that we had left at 7pm from JFK, and then ended up in Jerusalem 11 hours later at 230pm... time does not do good things to your body at times. The flight itself was not that bad, it was actaully interesting when we got to JFK because there were quite a few Orthodox Jews on board as well, and from time to time they would gather in the back of the plane and say thier prayers together. It was funny because no matter what the stewardesses said about the 'stay bucked' lights, they would just get thier robes and hats and go to the back and do thier prayer thing! The captin himself came on the PA and thold them himself that they needed to sit down (not by name of course) and they even ignored him! So while mostly uneventful, the flight was nevertheless amusing.
The Jerusalem Center itself is amazing! The archetecture that is here along with the view from my back porch help to make this a beautiful place. The teachers, thier families, and the service couples that are here also make this a wonderful place. We got a quick tour around the center today, got to check out things like the library, the laundry, and different classrooms, and of course what building in Jerusalem would be complete unless it had a bomb shelter! And there are actually 2 here, you get to choose between playing ping-pong or foozball depending on what shelter you are in! But the spirit of the building just hits you as you walk in. Truly this is a place that God put here to help His children appritiate the things that he has done for them, and place to make testimonies grow.
The food here was really good for dinner, i'll talk more about that later as I get a few more meals, but for the most part, all of the new spices are doing wonders for me. The best sweet potatoes ever here... yeah, so anyway... We got to have a little orienation thing tonight as well, and at the end my OT teacher showed us a slideshow from last semesters group that went. It is simply amazing all of the things that are going to be crammed into the next 3 1/2 months. All of the things to see and do just seemed amazing to me, and at the same time, a great feeling of expectation came upon me. I know that I am here to accomplish something, because I was told to come here, and I just really hope that I am able to take full advantage of the opportunities that the Lord has made available for me here. Tomorrow we begin with our first field trip, a tour of the Old City, which is the view that I get to wake up to every morning by the way!.JPG)
This is a picture from my bedroom by the way... yeah, I know, way cool!
The Jerusalem Center itself is amazing! The archetecture that is here along with the view from my back porch help to make this a beautiful place. The teachers, thier families, and the service couples that are here also make this a wonderful place. We got a quick tour around the center today, got to check out things like the library, the laundry, and different classrooms, and of course what building in Jerusalem would be complete unless it had a bomb shelter! And there are actually 2 here, you get to choose between playing ping-pong or foozball depending on what shelter you are in! But the spirit of the building just hits you as you walk in. Truly this is a place that God put here to help His children appritiate the things that he has done for them, and place to make testimonies grow.
The food here was really good for dinner, i'll talk more about that later as I get a few more meals, but for the most part, all of the new spices are doing wonders for me. The best sweet potatoes ever here... yeah, so anyway... We got to have a little orienation thing tonight as well, and at the end my OT teacher showed us a slideshow from last semesters group that went. It is simply amazing all of the things that are going to be crammed into the next 3 1/2 months. All of the things to see and do just seemed amazing to me, and at the same time, a great feeling of expectation came upon me. I know that I am here to accomplish something, because I was told to come here, and I just really hope that I am able to take full advantage of the opportunities that the Lord has made available for me here. Tomorrow we begin with our first field trip, a tour of the Old City, which is the view that I get to wake up to every morning by the way!
.JPG)
This is a picture from my bedroom by the way... yeah, I know, way cool!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Begining to a Great Summer
So I just got back from my final orientation meeting for the Jerusalem Center about two hours ago. A lot of it is stuff to scare you so that you follow a lot of the rules, but also it gave me a little insight into just how cool this summer is going to be. The only downside for all of you is that this is going to be the only picture that you see of me in Jerusalem until I return in 4 months. Because of the slow progress of technology over in Israel, they are about a whole generation behind the US in internet technology, and so it it like having dial-up speeds out there and so no pictures are allowed to be downloaded or uploaded or else the system will crash. So i'm sorry to all of you that were looking forward to seeing the pics from all of my adventures, but you are just going to have to exercise some patience until I am able to get home :) Facebook is also banned, but this is because of the stupidity of students last semester, and not the bandwidth issue!
Tomorrow I leave at 1015am from SLC and will get to Tel Aviv at 145pm on Wednesday, then the adventures will begin! So many things to look forward to, and i'm sure that I don't even know all the possibilities that will be open to me while I am there. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you as I travel through the land that Jesus called Home. I am grateful that I get to have this wonderful opportunity to live the Bible stories that I hear so much, put places with names and feel the spirit that still may live in some of the places.
Right now though I just need to get over the spirit of the stomach flu which had this great desire to ruin the moment for right now :( Say a prayer for me that I will get better soon! I would hate for the first few days to be overshadowed by me throwing up, especially on the plane tomorrow! Love you all, and I'll talk to you all soon!
Tomorrow I leave at 1015am from SLC and will get to Tel Aviv at 145pm on Wednesday, then the adventures will begin! So many things to look forward to, and i'm sure that I don't even know all the possibilities that will be open to me while I am there. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you as I travel through the land that Jesus called Home. I am grateful that I get to have this wonderful opportunity to live the Bible stories that I hear so much, put places with names and feel the spirit that still may live in some of the places.
Right now though I just need to get over the spirit of the stomach flu which had this great desire to ruin the moment for right now :( Say a prayer for me that I will get better soon! I would hate for the first few days to be overshadowed by me throwing up, especially on the plane tomorrow! Love you all, and I'll talk to you all soon!
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