1. Nazareth. The village of Nazareth was only 400 square miles when Christ lived there, so when we went and saw the village on this trip, we could be pretty sure that the places we were seeing were very close to the real spots. I thought one of the neatest things was seeing the cave where they believe Mary, Joseph, and Jesus lived. Of course, the whole thing has been embellished with newer walls now, and most of the remains are deep underground, but here it is:
There was also a beautiful church in Nazareth called the Church of the Annunciation, which is built around the supposed remains of Mary's childhood home. Here's a picture of that:
We've seen lots of sites like this during the summer, and none of them are certain to be the settings of the stories in the New Testament, but I thought these two sites were especially good.
2. The Sea of Galilee. We actually stayed the whole 11 days in a kibbutz right on the beach of the Sea of Galilee. It is great for swimming, and it has waves as long as there is a little bit of wind . The sea is also small enough that you can see all of its shores from any side. So, the whole Galilee region feels really cohesive, even though it's fairly large. I spent a lot of time just swimming and reading out on the beach, but our group also travelled around and saw sites commemorating so many New Testament events: the Sermon on the Mount, Christ feeding the 5,000, the legion of devils being cast into swine, the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain. All of these were close to the shores of the sea, just scattered around on all sides. I wish I could go into more detail about everything!
3. The Golan Heights. I was excited to see this, because it is one of the 3 contested areas in Israel--it used to belong to Syria. It's really a beautiful place! We hiked there twice, both times to waterfalls. On one of the hikes, we also went to a vulture overlook, and it was surprisingly lovely!
After we got home from Galilee, we had one last week of class, plus several free days to see some last minute things in the city. On that Sunday, I left with a small group at 6:15am to go to early mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was amazing! We got to the church just as the Catholics were finishing their mass, and then we walked around and saw parts of the Armenian, Ethiopian, and Greek Orthodox masses. They were all super interesting--lots of incense, chanting, ceremony--but it was hard to follow, not being able to speak any of their languages. Later that morning, though, we went to a German mass in the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and it was so incredible! It was definitely a highlight of the summer for me. Most of the congregation there was German, and the lady leading the service had a clear voice and perfect pronunciation, so I could understand most of what she was saying. There was a German woman out in the lobby before the service started, and I went and talked to her for a little bit! I don't think I have ever had so much exposure to real German in my whole life. I loved it! I have been trying to revive my German the past couple of weeks so that I am able to talk when I move into the German house this fall. I just finished reading Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens, and now I think I might start it over again--it really helps quite a bit.
The day after that, we went on a field trip back into the Old City to see some of the churches. It was nice, but when we got home, my camera wasn't in my bag! I called and asked the bus driver to check for it, and it wasn't there, so I realized I had left it in the city and gave it up for lost. It was really depressing! But the next day, my wonderful roommates came with me into the city to look for it, just in case there was a chance we might find it somewhere. I thought there was a possibility I might have left it at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, so we went to the front desk there and asked them if we could look inside for a camera. They responded by saying, "Oh, it's at the secretary's desk," and they pointed us back into that room. We walked in, and there it was! I couldn't believe it! I thanked the secretary a million times for keeping the camera, but she just said, "Well, what else were we going to do with it?" Really, though, in a poor city like Jerusalem, I was shocked that my camera had fallen into honest hands. And that we had found the right place. I was so happy all the rest of the day.
After that, we ran into several interesting people before we went home--a couple of nice merchants, a merchant in the Jewish Quarter named Dan who talked to us for about 15 minutes about the Mormons he had known in San Francisco when he used to live there, and two little Jewish girls named Esther and Rifka who I bought a painting from (they had been left in charge of the store, for some reason). We also met another Jewish merchant named Ruth, who was highly amused when she looked at Bethany's credit card. Bethany's last name is Bateman, and when Ruth saw that her eyebrows went up and she said "Batman? Your name is Batman?" She thought it was just wonderful--she talked for quite a while about how she had seen the Batman movie, and then she thought the whole thing was so funny that she had to call her husband. So she did. She told him, "Guess who I have in my store? A very important person--Batman!" Then he must have told her the proper pronunciation, because she said, "Bateman, Batman, same thing." She still thought it was just hilarious.
After that adventure, we had a few more days of class, and then another free day the next Sunday. A group of us went exploring the Kidron Valley--the valley in between the Mt. of Olives and Jerusalem, which we walk through every time we go into the city. This time, though, we walked down through it and saw Absalom's Pillar (a monument to David's son) and Zacharias's tomb. On the way there, we also saw the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, a church near the Garden of Gethsemane. It is down in a cave, and it has such a neat atmosphere. The minute we crossed the threshold, we could smell strong incense, and it was dark inside, and we had to walk down a long staircase to get down in the chapel. There were some Russian Orthodox priests down there having mass, so we watched that for awhile. I videotaped a lot of it, because their singing was some of the best that I have heard yet. We also went in the Grotto of Gethsemane, a cave where some people believe Judas betrayed Christ. There were three people in our group--Annie, Isaac, and Andy--who had learned a song called Dona Nobis Pacem, and their goal was to sing it in as many churches as possible that day. So they sang it in that cave, and it was just lovely.
Later that day, they also sang in the Church of All Nations (also next to Gethsemane) and Terra Sancta, a church in the Old City where we have made friends with one of the priests--Father Angelo. He took us back into a reception room to show us a book, and it turned out that this was a giant prayer book of Gregorian chant written by Franciscan monks in the 1400s! It was just amazing. It was just sitting inside a cabinet, hidden away back there. We are always stumbling upon things like that here.
I will try to continue updating soon!
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