Holy Land: We are going to Israel!
Late in 2019 my Sixth Grade teacher called me!! What a great surprise. She was in our area for the weekend and wanted to come to church with us and go out to eat after. She was a very close friend of my family growing up, but it had probably been since 1986 since I had seen her!
It turns out she had an agenda in tracking us down: She wanted to give my wife and I an all expense trip to the Holy Land - I was her only student (that she knew of) who had become a pastor. We were overwhelmed.
February 29, 2020 Margery (my wife), Scott and Shelly (friends from church), my sixth grade teacher (she opted to come with) and I landed in Tel Aviv, Israel. We traveled to Jerusalem by bus and settled into our hotel. The trip would officially begin the next day. There was no way we could hang out in our room so a small group of us went and explored the old city of Jerusalem at night. We were beyond excited.
The days in Israel moved very quickly. Our group was not a tour, but much more of “Biblical Studies” Group. There were about 26 of us. We arose early each day and spent our evenings exploring the cities where we stayed. Things are so close that it is possible to move from site to site quickly and we saw many places that I had read, studied and preached about from the Bible in a short period of time. We only changed hotels 3 or 4 times during our trip.
Day 1 (March First): Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Lazarus Tomb, Wilderness of Judea, Jericho: Old and New Testament sites, and Jesus’ Baptism in Jordon River site. It was an incredible and overwhelming day. And it was only the first day. We walked to the western wall after dark again - I touched the wall!!!
I did have one of my scarier moments this night when I walked outside of the Damascus gate, away from my little group for a photo, and got caught in a demonstration… the police quickly came and closed off the gate area… all ended well, but I stuck a little closer after that!
