Tent of Nations

Hi everyone!

I thought I'd do a quick post, considering it may be my last. I can't believe this trip is ending tomorrow already! It has been such an amazing experience, and I can't wait to tell you more about it. (If you are not related to me, rely on your relatives that I've been travelling with.) ;)

Today we harvested wheat (by hand) at the Tent of Nations. (Google it.) It was pretty cool, contrary to my sunburned legs.

Now we're hanging out until dinner. Tomorrow we will be seeing the Church of the Nativity and going to an Olive Wood factory.

We will head to the airport around 6 or 7pm. Our plane leaves at 11:55pm.

This trip has been absolutely wonderful and powerful, but home is always the best place to be. :)

See you in a few days!
-Carrie.

Alive and Well in Bethlehem

We're in Christmastown! (Seriously, they even have a countdown to Christmas.)

Alright, we've arrived in Bethlehem and are back to touring after a week of digging.

First, we went to church this morning and had the experience of hearing both the Lord's Prayer and "How Great Thou Art" in Arabic. Pretty cool. :)

We then saw Herod's Temple ruins, in which they actually found Herod's tomb.

Then we went out for some shopping and saw the wall that divides Israel and Palestine. The wall was intimidating.

We then headed back and had some dinner. I know this post is really short, and a bit lame, but I'll make up for it with a picture! Ready?

Here's the group at the Herodian Palace

See you guys in a few weeks! I can't believe this trip is almost wrapping up. Jeepers.

-Carrie.

Diggin'

Hello!

The past couple of days, we've been digging in the archaeological site. Woot! It's called Bethsaida, and a portion of it has a road that is definitely where Jesus walked. There's also some evidence for the finding of Luke's house there. Mostly, it was a fishing community (as it was located right next to the Sea of Galilee before some earthquakes). It's really cool.

We've found some pretty cool things, mostly pottery and bones from the Iron Age. It has been a really awesome experience to think that we are the first ones to get our hands on these things probably since they were broken way back in the day. Ha. The four-year-old in my is having a lot of fun playing the sand box. ;)

We've also visited a couple of other churches and museums, including a church dedicated to the multiplication of loaves and bread and the Beatitudes.

We also so the city of Capernaum, where Jesus got in trouble for healing on the Sabbath.

It's been a great couple of days, and I am really excited to get back to digging tomorrow, even with the 5:10am wake-up call.

Hope you all have a great day!!

-Carrie.

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

Hello, all.

I sincerely apologize for not blogging for a while. We were in Jordan and internet was hard to come by.

We saw some pretty amazing things on our way to Jordan including Masada (an ancient palace where Jewish rebels once hid) and Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found).

In Jordan, we also saw a lot of cool things, including Mount Nebo and Gerash, the most well-preserved Roman city in the Meditteranean.

We are now back in Israel and starting our archaeological dig. This morning was the first 5am wake up call, and it was a bit rough. We've all got more sunburns and blisters to prove our hard work. :) Today was mostly clearing out weeds and thistles; hopefully tomorrow we'll actually start digging.

I have to pay for internet here, $5 for half an hour, so I'm not sure how much I will be able to blog, but I just wanted to let you know that we are all very happy and very safe. :)

Have a great week if I don't get back to you!!

It's Funny How a Foreign City Can Feel Like Home

I honestly can't believe it is our last night in Jerusalem. Even though we've only been here five days, it feels a bit like home. We know a lot of the streets, we know how to get to our hotel, we've walked (I feel) everywhere and met some pretty amazing people.

Today we started out by travelling to the Holocuast Museum, the Yad Vashem, on the other side of the city. We took a taxi/bus, thank goodness. It was very impactful, and I know a lot of us were pretty shaken by the things we saw. It was a very touching experience. If you ever get to come to Israel/Jerusalem, put it on your list.

Then we grabbed some lunch at David's Pizza, a place right down the street from our hotel, and headed to the Wohl Museum, which is a building built around essentially a first-century mansion. It is an example of how the Donald Trumps/Bill Gates' would have lived back in Jesus' time. It was huge! And had all this beautiful mosiac work on the floors, and the walls were actually plastered and painted, which totally surprised me.

After that we grabbed a bus to the Mount of Olives (no hiking this time...our calf muscles thanked us) to see the headquarters of the Lutheran World Federation here and see the Augusta Victoria Hospital. It is one of the few hospitals available to the Palestininans in the entire West Bank. They specialize in cancer treatments, dialysis, geriatrics, and ears/nose/mouth. They are the only hospital that specializes in these things, so if a Palestinian had cancer, this is the only hospital to come to for treatment.

We then headed to a place across from the hospital and close to the Strickert's to play volleyball and meet some people that attend their church. We also had a delicious meal there.

So yeah! That's been our day...the last one in Jerusalem. I'm not exactly sure how internet access will be from here on out, but I will try my darndest to succeed in posting everyday. I just don't want to make any promises I can't keep. Cool?

Alright, have a great day/night. We start our morning tomorrow at 6:30, so we're all catching some shut eye early. :)
Carrie.

Is it seriously only day four?

We have a little under an hour to spare before our dinner at 7pm, so I thought I'd jot a couple things down.

We started out our day observing the Wailing Wall. I thought it was interesting that men and women had to seperate when going to the wall. (If you don't know, the Wailing or Western Wall is the last standing part of the Second Temple, built by King Solomon. I think it is part of the outer wall surrounding the temple...don't quote me on that. If interested, I suggest Google.)

We then travelled Hezekiah's tunnel and saw the City of David. Hezekiah's Tunnel was built by none other than...Hezekiah. It was built to carry water in from outside the city to an inner pool, so they had water supply within their city during war times. It was underground, pretty narrow and short in some places, and the water got up to my thighs at one point. But it was pretty cool. We then saw the Church of All Nations, which was closed yesterday. This was built in the Garden of Gethsemane. There are olive trees standing outside the church that have been there for 2000 years...since Christ. They call it the Church of All Nations because many different nations donated money in order for it to be built.

After that, we walked by Absolom's Tomb. (It's not really Absolom's tomb...just named that. Although, many people will throw rocks at it because he betrayed his father.) Then we hiked up a lot of stairs to get lunch in the Jewish Quarter and stayed there for a while.

After that, we hoofed it to King David's tomb and what was traditionally thought of as the Upper Room, or where Jesus had the last supper. However, the architecture does not match that time period at all, and it's clearly a mosque. So, I'm guessing it's not the Upper Room...

We then went to a couple of churches, including the Church of Domition, which is thought to be where Mary (the mother of Jesus, not Magdalene) lived and died. There are actually three churches around that claim this, though. We also saw a church (can't remember the name now...) that was dedicated to Peter's betrayal of Jesus. Archaeologists think it was built upon Caiphas' house, and that Jesus would have been prisoned inside caves, which we were able to see.

Rather tired, we then walked through the Armenian Quarter to get back to the hotel to journal, shower, sleep, etc.

We're all doing great on the trip, even with the extreme walking, sunburns, and exhaustion. Hope you are all having a great day so far (it's seriously only 10:20am there?!).

Carrie.

"It feels like we've been walking for three weeks on a constant incline."

Yo.

Today we joked that we were on the Biggest Loser marathon, May Term style. We've walked everywhere!!

We started our day at 7am at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In the fourth century, Constantine's mother asked the Christians where Jesus was crucified, and they pointed to this place, where she built a church. It has been rebuilt and is currently shared by the Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Coptic church. There were many icons inside. We were also able to touch the rock that has been said to have been the rock that Jesus' body was laid on after he was taken down from the cross. We were also able to go into the tomb where Jesus was laid.

We then went to the Garden Tomb, which is owned by protestants. There is also some evidence for Jesus' death and burial in this area as well. There was a stark contrast between this and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They were very insistent that people should focus on the actual story and person of Christ, rather than the rocks.

We then walked around the Mount of Olives and saw a few churches, a cemetary, and a place where Jesus taught the disciples the Lord's prayer. They had large plaques of the Lord's Prayer in almost every language.

We also had dinner at the Strickert's tonight. Gloria made us delicious food, and it was really cool to talk to people who were connected to Wartburg so closely and now are living in Jerusalem.

That's essentially everything. I don't want to tell absolutely everything on the blog...I don't want to deprive people of stories! (And there are some great stories.)

Type at ya later!