Category Archives: The Holy Land

Long Time, No Blog

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Hey everyone! It has been a really busy week, full of exams and papers and pulling all-nighters. Consequently, I haven’t posted for a while, so here are the highlights of the last ten days:

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

We had a nice little blizzard here in Jerusalem. Since snow is so rare here, everything in the city shut down and our classes were canceled because none of our professors would come teach–people just don’t leave their houses when it snows here, and there aren’t any snowplows.

AND THEY CAME TWO BY TWO…OR THREE

We went to the Jerusalem Biblical zoo, which has the actual ark built by Noah. Seriously. : )

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH

The field where David slew Goliath doesn’t have any monuments or churches built there, so it’s easy to imagine the battle of the Philistines taking place there.

Some thoughts I had on David v. Goliath:

“And Saul armed David with his armor, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword upon his armor, and he assayed to go; for he had not proved it. And David said unto Saul, I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them. And David put them off him. and he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd’s bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine.”
-1 Samuel 17:39-40

Because David tended his father’s sheep instead of going to war, he had never worn armor or wielded a sword. For that reason, when he put on the helmet, mail, armor, and sword, he wasn’t used to using it. Even though they were formidable weapons, he hadn’t practiced with them, so he removed the armor and put down the sword and took up his shepherd’s sling instead. He had already used his sling to kill a lion and a bear while tending his father’s sheep. In Ephesians 6:11, we are instructed to “put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” However, we cannot wield weapons or be protected by armor that we have never “proved” before. We can’t just put on the armor of God in times of temptation. Like David with his sling, we will be most effective with weapons that he have practiced and proved. Only if we seek to put on the armor of God every day will we be able to use it to defend ourselves in times of trial.

Any thoughts on this, or on David and Goliath? I’m interested in what you guys have to say.

RED CRESCENT SOCIETY HOSPITAL

Madison and I volunteered at the hospital nearby; we fed the babies there.

Gaza, Egypt, and Unrest

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I have only been here three weeks, but it feels like months already. Or maybe a lifetime.

I was worried about living away from home for the first time, but fortunately I’ve been too buys to get terribly homesick. Between the heavy load of schoolwork I have here, the articles I write for work, and my sightseeing…um…obligations, I never have a spare moment. This semester seems pretty relaxing compared to last semester, however. Taking a full-time schedule of classes and working three jobs nearly killed me. : )

We weren’t allowed in the Old City yesterday. Since Tuesday there has been a lot of unrest because of the situation in Gaza. If you haven’t been following the situation there, here it is in a nutshell: Hamas launched airstrikes on Israeli settlements from Gaza, so the Israeli government shut off Gaza’s fuel and other resources. On Tuesday, Hamas operatives blew down the border wall between Gaza and Egypt, and now hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza are pouring into Egypt to buy fuel and food. More than seven miles of the wall has been torn down, and the refugees have been flooding the border ever since.

We are leaving for Egypt tomorrow morning for eight-day trip. We’ll be crossing the Israel-Egypt border sometime tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have an armed guard on each of our busses, and we’re all hoping that there won’t be any complications–keep your fingers crossed!

Jerusalem is a true melting pot of Muslims, Palestinian Christians, Russian Jews and Christians, and Jews from all nations. But once we cross the border into Egypt, we’ll be in a land that is almost entirely Muslim. It will be an eye-opening experience, I’m sure.

We wont’ have computer access in Egypt, so I won’t be posting for a while. I love you all! Until after Egypt!

Zedekiah’s Cave

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Today we explored Zedekiah’s Cave, which is under the Old City of Jerusalem. It started out as a natural cave with the entrance on the north side of the city. In Solomon’s time, and then again in Herod’s time, the limestone from the cave was quarried out for the construction of both the temples. Now it is no longer a small cave–it is a huge cavern that extends all the way under the city of Jerusalem, and one finger of it reaches almost to Jericho!

Jaffa: Mediterranean Paradise

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Some other students and I planned a trip to Jaffa, just down the coast from Tel Aviv. We played frisbee on the beach and wandered the streets (and the flea market, my favorite) of Jaffa. Unlike Jerusalem, which is like no other place on earth, Jaffa could be any port city. It’s relaxed, fun, and quintessentially Mediterranean.

The unique thing about Jaffa, though, is that it’s the oldest port city in the world. According to tradition, it was founded by Noah’s son Japheth after the flood (the name Jaffa comes from Japheth). Israel’s largest archaeological site, Caesarea, is only a few kilometers from here, and in Old Jaffa we saw ruins of a wall built by the Egyptians three thousand years ago.

Me, Dave, Brittney, and Jade (that thing above Dave’s head is a frisbee, not a UFO)

Jaffa is much more relaxed than Jerusalem. It’s not an Orthodox religious center, just a beach town, where everyone is Jewish and all the restaurants make kosher fish.

Kristi and I loved Old Jaffa’s flea market!

This is Real

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Currently, only Muslims can go inside the Dome of the Rock, and you have to get lucky to get up onto the Temple Mount at all. Fortunately, heaven smiled down on us and we were able to make the ascent.

The view from the Temple Mount is amazing. You can see almost all of Jerusalem.

A woman begging on the stairs to the Mosque. There are beggars everywhere in this city.

Corinthian columns built during Ottoman times (and BYU students).

On the Streets of Jerusalem

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I love the tunnel-like streets here and the crowded shops and stalls along the way. I usually venture out with my friend Dave, my roommates Jade and Madison, and other random guys who join us. (We always have to be in groups of three or more and we always have to have a guy with us to be out after dark. Security is a big deal here–we have a lot of rules!)

The Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea

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At the church of the Holy Sepulchre, we got a tour from an Augustine monk who showed us the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (not the tomb that Christ was laid in; the one that he acquired after, since the fist tomb was overrun by Christ’s disciples). You have to descend down to the lower levels of the church to get to it, since that all happened two thousand years ago, and people have been building things over the old city of Jerusalem for two millenia.

The tomb is a small cave with no lighting; you have to take a candle in with you. Of course, the candle light adds to the early-Christian effect. : )

The Via Dolorosa

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Via Dolorosa means “Way of Pain” in Latin. The Via Dolorosa is the road on which Christ carried his cross through the city of Jerusalem. Along the way, Catholics and other Christians reverence the fourteen stations, or fourteen spots where incidents occurred along Christ’s journey. (For example, one station is where the Catholic Saint Veronica is said to have wiped Christ’s brow with her veil.)

We were walking near the third station, where Christ is said to have fallen while carrying his cross. There is a church, more than a thousand years old, that stands on the spot. We toured the chapel, and when we came out there was a group of Franciscans doing a re-enactment of Christ’s journey and carrying a cross. They carry it all along the Via Dolorosa, following the route that the Savior took. They stopped at every station and read from the accounts in the Gospels of Christ’s crucifixion, and they sang hymns in Latin. We followed them on their journey.