Day 2 in Jerusalem

Today was another 12+ hour day trying to cram in all that there is to see in Jerusalem. We started the day by going up to the Temple Mount! We went there first thing since it is a very popular site. There are many entrances to the mount, but only one entrance that non-Muslims can enter through since they currently control the Temple Mount.


The guard letting us in was apparently more particular than they normally are. We were told before we left that morning that we could not wear shorts up there so we were prepared for that, but on this morning the guard decided that short sleeves on women were not allowed. So we had to get scarfs to cover our arms... which they proceeded to charge us 5 times the price they were selling them for in the marketplace. Our church fronted that cost because it was so unexpected and our leader Todd was furious that they had extorted us in that way. But such is life when traveling...

Here I am in front of the Dome of the Rock which is the shrine the Muslims built in 670ish AD to commemorate Muhammed ascending to heaven to receive a message from God. They built it over the place where the Jewish temple once stood before being destroyed in 70 AD. That was one of my favorite places to visit just knowing the history of it and knowing how much time Jesus spent on the Temple Mount... teaching, cleansing the temple, going there as a boy, etc. We talked about the layout of the Temple in Jesus's time and based on the extensive model we had seen the day before at the museum, it really have me a great picture of how things were.

Matt and the Dome of the Rock

We also saw the Al Aqsa Mosque which is up there and had some great views!

From there we went over to the Pools of Bethesda where we read about the miracle Jesus performed by healing the man who was paralyzed (John 5:1-15). We have an man from Galilee traveling with us as an officially sanctioned tour guide in addition to our leader Todd. He is a Jewish man who became a Christian years ago and has a great testimony about how he was healed from being paralyzed after being a victim of a bombing while he was in the army. After graduating from high school, all boys must serve 3 years in the military and all girls must serve 2 years.

For lunch, we had Shawarma and Sprite. Yum (think Chipotle gone Israeli)! Meat, cucumbers, lots of veggies, yummy sauces... don't know all of the details, but it was good!

After lunch we headed to the South Temple wall to see some of the remains that have been excavated there. Here is Matt standing by some of the stones that were thrown off of the temple wall when it was destroyed by the Romans.

Here is our group sitting on the steps leading up to where the main entrance to the temple was! We started at the bottom and as a group took turns reading the 15 Psalms of Ascent as we walked up the 15 stairs leading up to the temple (Psalm 120-134). It was a very worshipful experience!

Me at the South Temple Wall

After that we headed over to a very likely place  for where the Upper room was where Jesus and the disciples often met, where they had the last supper, and where the believers in Acts 1 and 2 waited to receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Here is one of the gates of the Old City - the Damascus Gate

We also visited "The Garden Tomb" which some believe to be the tomb of Jesus. However, dating of the tomb makes this tomb much older than the 1st century AD and Jesus was entombed in a "new tomb" of Joseph of Arimathea (Matthew 27:60). It was still neat to get to see a tomb from long, long ago.

Afterward, we visited St. Stephen's Church to view some tombs from around 600BC. It was a very well preserved site and we saw the main preparation room, and 5 different rooms of tombs. To bury their dead in this time, they would lie their bodies in the tomb for a year until the skin decomposed and then would place their bones in a repository box underneath one of the tomb benches and reuse the tomb for future family members. We saw a lot of really old bones in those repositories. Kind of creepy but also an amazing glimpse into the past.


So on that kind of gross note, I will wrap up the day. I am very sore from the 12+ hours of walking and we slept really well that night! More to come!

First FULL Day in Jerusalem

Today was our first full day in Jerusalem, and I mean FULL! Matt and I got up before breakfast and took a walk part of the way around the outside of the Old City. We got some nice looking shots of the sun rising over the wall.

After a breakfast of hard boiled eggs, yummy croissants, cheese fruit and cereal we headed out for the entire day. Our first stop was the roof of a nearby building to get an overview of the Old City. It was quite helpful as we are trying to learn the layout of the city.

 Looking east... the two gray domes are the Church of the Holy Sepulcher - the site I think I'm most excited about visiting (tomorrow!) which is the church built over the tomb of Jesus...

Also looking east is the temple mount... of course the Jewish temples have long since been destroyed and the mount is now control by the Islamic people who have their shrine the Dome of the Rick and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. We are also going to go on the Temple Mount tomorrow which should also be amazing.

After the great overview of the city, we headed on another walk through the city streets, this time to the Jewish Quarter. It had the newest looking buildings that I've seen in the Old City since most of it was destroyed in by Arab forces during the 1948 war for Israel's Independence. During excavations in the 1970s, a portion of the wall Hezekiah built  in 701 BC (2 Kings 19) was unearthed. It is now called the Broad Wall and it was amazing to see this 25ft thick fortification from that long ago. 701 BC!

Another view of the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock

We talked briefly about a group of Jews who are taking an active role in preparing for the restoration of the Jewish temple. They are building pieces that would be placed in the temple such as this 75 kilo golden menorah.

 We then walked down to the City of David which is the place where David first conquered the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites (2 Samuel 5:6). We saw the remains of buildings and supporting walls for what was likely David's Palace.

An ancient toilet


We were also able to do something amazing... walk through Hezekiah's tunnel. This is a tunnel that King Hezekiah built to transfer water from the Gihon spring into the city when preparing for the city to be under siege. We walked down many slippery steps and rock pathways a long way under ground to reach the tunnel. We wades through the tunnel for 30 minutes to get from entrance to exit. The water was cold and came to our knees at the deepest and our shins most of the time. I didn't take any pictures because my camera was securely in a ziploc bag in my backpack during the trek through the narrow tunnels.
 

Here is our leader, Todd, teaching us about the Pool of Siloam - the place where Jesus sent the blind man to wash after he healed him by spitting, making mud, and rubbing it on his eyes (John 9).

Pool of Siloam (currently dry)

We kept going and going for a truly physically grueling day (we were walking the town from 7:30am until 5pm) but saw one of the coolest, most helpful things yet! At the Israeli Museum is a huge, outdoor model of Jerusalem from the 1st century. Unbelievable. We had been to many of the spots in present day already, but this model really helped us visualize what the sites looked like in Jesus's day. We spent an hour just walking around this model and talking through all of the sections of the city.

A picture of the whole model - look at the people standing around to get the scale of it. Awesome.

 

The temple mount from the 1st century


To end our day, we got to have yet another once-in-a-lifetime experience. We got to see the Dead Sea Scrolls!! These documents so well preserved because of the desert climate were found in a cave in 1947 are over 2000 years old. It was amazing to see the writing of scripture on these parchments and recognize the amazing fidelity of those who have copied scripture through the ages as only minor spelling and other changes were found between the scripture of today and these scrolls. Also so amazing and faith-building is knowing that the whole Isaiah scroll that was found has been determined by all scholars who have dated it to have without a doubt written before the time of Jesus. Knowing all of the prophecies about Jesus in that book truly shows it's divine inspiration.

Spent the evening walking around a local shopping mall just outside the Old City - one of the few modern things I've visited, and got to get a glimpse of how expensive things are in Israel (because of taxes, and lack of competition among other reasons). Prices were almost double the price of similar goods in America.

So today we ended up sunburned, exhausted, but full of so much more knowledge, experience and appreciation for the Bible, the City of God, and most importantly the LORD our God. And it's only Day 1. Off to bed, quite tired from the day and the fact that I woke up at 2:15am last night and couldn't go back to sleep because of jet lag!

Our first afternoon in Israel

Can't believe I am still awake! I couldn't sleep on the plane at all! But I wanted to send a few pictures from our first day in Jerusalem. We left Dallas at 10:30am on Saturday, April 21, sat at the JFK airport for 5 hours before taking of in a 747 jumbo jet for Ben Gurion airport. We were able to be fully rested to start our trip so the first day of travel wasn't too bad. Until 1:00-6:00am on the airplane. Sleeping sitting up... no good. We were fed breakfast then and started to see some high, snowy mountains in Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, and then the straight coastline of Israel. So adrenaline started carrying us at that point! Everything went smoothly getting off of the plane and through the airport. Thankfully, the trip has been well planned. We got a number of stamps in our passports and have gone through many security checkpoints just to get into the country.

Here is our bus for the trip! We were picked up at the airport by our driver, Nael, and drove for an hour into Jerusalem. We are traveling with about 40 other people mostly from our church. We prayed as a group as we drove out of the airport for the many answered prayers for our safe arrival. We thanked God for the opportunity to be in his chosen land and  excitedly looked forward to seeing Israel. We quickly started ascending the hills out of the flat plain/coastline where the airport was into the Shephelah (foothills) and then into the hill country  I was getting sleepy on the bus ride, but our trip leader Todd had lots of interesting things to point out as we drove along.



We are staying right in Old City Jerusalem! This is us walking into Jaffa Gate  - the gate leading to the road to Jaffa/Joppa. Our bus dropped us off at the bottom of this hill and we climbed many stairs up to the Old City. There was a road that we saw with a few cars on it. But most of the roads in the Old City are only for foot traffic (and some motorcycles)!



Look closely - sign for Jaffa Gate



Just inside the gate we turned up the first road and were at our hotel! The Gloria hotel has been a very authentic experience so far. Made out of the required stone facade, decorated in a very Israeli style, kind of cave like but very comfortable. We are staying on the 1st floor (which is actually the second floor because they start counting their stories with the ground level first like in Europe) and have a very comfortable room. We appreciate our leader Todd seeking out this very authentic hotel right in the heart of the Old City instead of the more modern ones in the outskirts of Jerusalem.



The street outside of the hotel




Our room! We dropped of our luggage and were in our room for literally 5 minutes before we hit the road again. We were told not to even test out our pillows yet :)



In the lobby of the hotel about to head out into the city

Our leader Todd led us out into the city to a shop in the Christian Quarter owned by Shabban - a man he has been doing business with in a fair manner for 20 years. We changed our money there into New Israeli Shekels and got our senses FILLED with the sights, colors, and smells of all of the shops in the Christian Quarter.



We walked around a little bit outside of our hotel and then went back for dinner. The food was wonderful... hummus, lots of vegetable salads all with a different seasoning, seasoned yellow rice, meat in a creamy sauce, pita bread and pasta. And cake for dessert.



After dinner we went back to our room for literally 15 minutes before we were off again for the Western Wall. We wound our way past the Christian Quarter and through the old city for the maybe 10-15 minute walk to the wall from our hotel. We had to go through security again at the entrance to the wall and have our bags and cameras xrayed.



Matt and I descending the steps into the prayer plaza with the Western Wall behind us. The bottom 7 rows of stones are huge in size and were laid there by King Herod when he rebuilt the temple (there are also many more rows of stones underground). The top rows of the wall were reconstructed a little over 100 years ago.



The wall was a very worshipful area full of many Jews there to pray as their ancestors have been praying in this location for hundreds and hundreds of years. The wall is the remains of the outer courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem. The temple first destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians, later rebuilt by King Herod and was destroyed again in 70 AD by the Romans. There are remains of the other 4 walls as well and I believe we will also see the Southern wall and Northern wall. If you look closely in this picture, you can see the small pieces of paper containing prayers that people have put into the crevices in the wall.



The men and women have separate areas that they can go to pray that are separated by gates. Here is my view of the wall from the Women's Side. Hundreds of women and their children prayed here using prayer books, laying their hands on the wall and chanting.




The men were also very worshipful in their prayers with many of them bowing repeatedly as they prayed, chanting, singing and almost all of them wearing the same clothes. Many men had peyots (the curls the grow on the side of their head and never cut), wore black suits, white shirts, and black hats. Matt said many of them also had on almost identical glasses.

We saw a number of young-looking soldiers with machine guns in this area and near our hotel but never felt unsafe or even unwelcome. The hotel staff greeted us warmly as did the shop keepers (of course). I feel like I am a big dollar sign walking through the Christian Quarter as EVERYONE has something to show me. We haven't bought anything yet (except a bottle of water for 5 shekels) but are taking it all in and deciding what souvenirs we'd like to have. Saw many cute camel stuffed animals and tshirts with any character and the world "Jerusalem" on it (Hello Kitty, Angry Birds, Smurfs, even BYU Cougars).

We were able to check in on the kids and talk to Oliver before we went to bed and that was wonderful. They are doing well and are being well taken care of by Granna and Papa! We went to bed at 9pm local time (1pm Texas time) and fell asleep immediately. I woke up at 2am after sleeping for 5 hours and then laid in bed for another hour before I gave up on sleeping. I might try and lay down again in a bit. Matt has been snoozing next to me the whole time (he did on the plane too). I guess I'm a lighter sleeper!

We love everyone and look forward to updating you about our day tomorrow/today which we have been promised will be incredible!

Spring in Texas Means Bluebonnets!

My husband had the wonderful idea the other night of taking us out to a bluebonnet field he had passed while driving to work one morning. He knows my love for this spring-time flower and I was all in! The kids really enjoyed it too and even though the field wasn't that large, we found enough fun ways to play that we spent almost an hour romping through the beautiful flowers!

Where's Waldo?

Now you see him...

... now you don't.

A bee buzzing for some nectar... don't tell our afraid-of-all-bugs girl Gabby!

Stopping to smell the flowers...

Daddy was playing hide and seek with the kids... "Found you!"

Ladybug

And just so you don't think that we are always all smiles around here from the pictures that I usually post on this blog, a healthy dose of reality for you:

Love

These

Kids!

The best picture of all 3 of them... :)