Stephanie In Jerusalem

Wednesday August 5th

2009-08-10T14:24:00.005-07:00

Wednesday was pretty boring. I had NT in the morning for another two hours. It stinks that we are just learning that much more to be tested on this week, but at the same time we are learning about the Savior's last week and it so incredible to be able to study the Savior's life so much. After class I went running with Mason, shocker we are actually pretty consistent now! It was a good run and then I got my biking and other stuff in for the day. I spent the rest of the day studying and studying and studying for that stinkin ANE final. At 7 pm was a review with Dr. Skinner and it went really well. It was just a question and answer session but it helped me know things I needed to keep studying for better. After the review I was ready for bed even though it was only 8:30, so I got ready for bed and just planned on waking up early in the morning to study and write my paper. Yes, I had a 4 page paper to write before 5:00 pm the next day. It is called an aha moment paper and we have to think of a time when scriptures, history and geography really came together for us and gave us an aha kind of moment. I have had a lot of little aha moments, but not one I could really write 4 pages on, so I had to do a little research. I really liked learning about the Sicarii in class and Brother Skinner had compared them to the Gadianton robbers which made them even more interesting. I knew I wanted to write on these two secret combinations and then compare them to the secret combinations of our day, but I just kept putting off the actual writing part. So it was off to bed nice and early so I could get that paper done the next morning.

Tuesday August 4th

2009-08-10T14:24:00.003-07:00

New Testament in the morning for two hours and then ANE for the last time in my life! Hooray! I've actually really enjoyed the class, but still, I'm glad its over. Then we had our last announcement session. It's kinda crazy, everything is our last now. Announcements were very memorable. Brother Brown scolded us for putting our feet on the furniture and turned out the lights and read a poem about goblins who get disobedient children and had a flashlight under his face and it was just great. I love that man, he has so much personality and is just so . . . him! Then Raven showed a James Bond movie her and some of the other students made and it was so good! I was very impressed and it was very enjoyable to watch. Then we had our last linen exchange, another last. For now on I'll actually have to wash my own sheets, stink. I must say, after changing my sheets every single week here I think I'll keep it up at home. It's so wonderful having a nice clean bed all the time. After linens it was lunch and then I spent the rest of the day getting a run and workout in and studying for my ANE final. Ugh, I can't believe we really have finals this week, I'm so sick of school and my life is going to bliss when they are all over. At this point all we have is finals, and then two field trips, a couple free days and then it is home sweet home! I am ecstatic, I'll be home in ten days! I can't wait to see my family. After studying it was goodbye and goodnight.

Sunday August 2nd

2009-08-10T14:24:00.001-07:00

Today is a free day and then the rest of the week will be crazy with classes and finals and field trips. We only have three field trips left, one tomorrow and two next week! Wow, this next week and a half is going to fly. I woke up and went to breakfast and then called my parents. I finally heard all about my Mom's birthday and was really glad she had such a great birthday, and of course really sad I couldn't be there with her. After talking to them I gave my Nana and Papa a call. My Papa was supposed to have surgery on the 31^st of July, but after the ward fasted and prayed and he got a second opinion and talked to some other doctors he found out he didn't for sure have to get it! So instead of recovering from surgery, they are going to leave to the boat tomorrow! I'm very thankful that he feeling healthy and that I'll be able to be there when he gets surgery if he has to get surgery. Life sure can be crazy. I forgot I had planned to go running with mason at 8:45, so I had to kind of abruptly end the conversation with my Nana and Papa, but they said I could call them in Washington or when they get back. Mason and I ran 3 miles outside today at a 7:43 pace which isn't great, but isn't bad. Then I went in and biked for an hour and a half, giving me a total of 10.5 miles for the day! Woo hoo, I feel good (na na na na na) – I knew that I would! Ha ha, I'm excited it was such a good workout day. After biking I did a good ab workout and stretching, and then I took a bath and showered and then I just felt good for the day! Rach, Erin and I went to Hebrew U to check up on some things and then we were supposed to feed the babies at 3:30. Well, we lost track of the time a little bit and didn't leave Hebrew U until 3:20. We ran back to the center and then ran down to Red Crescent hospital and we made it there by 3:32. The nurses asked if it was hot outside and we said yes and then they said they could tell by the sweat on our foreheads – that's a little gross. After that it was back to hanging out in the center until dinner.

West J: After dinner there were 15 girls all wanting to leave to West Jerusalem, but we couldn't find a boy who wanted to go. Jonah finally agreed to go and so he walked over with 4 of us girls and then the other girls were going to take a van over and meet us there. While we were waiting for the van girls we made up a little song of appreciation for Jonah. I made up one and so did Rach actually, and then we made a video filming our wonderful award winning songs.

My Song:    Jonah is my name
            15 ladies is my game
            West Jeru every night
            Yeah, I know it's tight
            Except for when they fight
            Over me . . . that's right

Ha ha, it was great fun. After that we met up with a big group at the waffle shop, but before that got a little bit of exploring and shopping in. So I had heard only good things about those waffles, but they were amazing! They make waffles and then put different stuff in the squares. You can order butter cream or butter scotch, or vanilla or chocolate, or anything and it is so good! I got one and split it with Rach. We got butterscotch and it was warm and wonderful, and so wonderful in fact I had to go back for another one. This time Dan split with me. I got butter cream which wasn't as good as butter scotch, but it was still delicious. Rachel, Trish, Kenzie and I were talking about how well a waffle shop would do in Provo, it would be like J Dawgs, everyone would love it! You could do a little stand where you get hot chocolate and waffles. The nights here are absolutely beautiful. It's warm, but not hot, and I just love sitting outside. After we were done eating we were sitting and talking and there was this full waffles somebody left, just left there. Well, I got dared to take a bite, and it looked not too bad and I couldn't turn down a dare, especially when it involved food, so I did it! We got the whole thing on film, and honestly it tasted just fine, the waffle was just a little cold. We looked around for a bit and then called a van and rode home. That night we were going to whip out the pop rock chocolate and a movie, but realized we had a field trip bright and early and instead just ended up turning in for the night, the better choice.

Saturday August 1st

2009-08-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

Today was my very last Sunday in the Holy Land, I can't believe my time here is finally coming to a close. I feel like I've been here forever, but then again there is still so much to do and see. Two weeks seems like such a short amount of time, but also such a large amount of time. It is still two weeks until I'll be able to be my family again, but on the flipside I only have two weeks left in the Holy Land. All these thoughts were running through my mind as I sat in sacrament meeting looking over the Holy Land knowing my time here is limited. All these thoughts and feelings helped me to really appreciate our Relief Society lesson. The topic was Priority Packing for our Permanent Home and Sister Skinner taught the lesson. We first discussed all the things we thought we'd miss when coming to the Holy Land. I knew I would miss my family and certain foods and stuff like that, but I surprised myself with some of the things I missed. Here are some of the things I have missed the last couple months: my family, my clothes, cleaning around the house, playing outdoors, swimming, my mom's crazy projects, waking up early and watching cartoons, making my own food, having no agenda, service, teasing and being teased by all my brothers, little kids, running alone, driving in the car with the windows rolled down and blasting music, staying up all night talking with my mom and watching Gilmore Girls, seeing my dad awake and reading scriptures in the morning, Panda Express and Costa Vida, the temple, ice water, and much much more. There is so much I miss from home and that makes me realize how much I will miss when I leave this wonderful place. Sister Skinner prompted us to think about the different things we want to take home with us. Here's my list: reading my scriptures first thing in the morning instead of squeezing them in at night, journaling up the wazoo, really studying the scriptures instead of just reading them, close relationships with some incredible daughters of God, being humble and realizing how blessed I am and how much the Lord has given me, excitement for each and every day because life is an adventure, anticipation of Shabbat, preparing for Shabbat physically and spiritually, my desire to share the gospel, the constant attendance of the spirit, the call to prayer five times a day (even though I won't listen to it, I want to remember to keep a prayer in my heart and pray always) and my strengthened testimony of my Savior Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven. These are just a few of the things I want to bring back with me but I know that I'm bringing home so much more. More than anything I am thankful for my testimonies and if I had to leave everything else here I would still be content bringing home the knowledge I have that my Savior Jesus Christ atoned for my sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. He has felt every pain I have felt, every yearning and every sorrow. I know that he loves me and would perform the entire atonement over again for me alone. I know that Christ died on the cross, his final mortal act of love for me and all of Heavenly Father's other children. After three days Christ was resurrected and this act brings up hope for the future. We too can be resurrected and live in the presence of God in the eternities. This is all a part of Heavenly Father's divine plan and I know that this plan was established before we came to earth and we are actively participating in the plan. I know that if I live worthily I will be able to be welcomed in to the Celestial Kingdom and be not only with my brother Brady and the rest of my earthly family, but with my big brother Jesus Christ and my loving Father in Heaven. These things are not just a belief I have, but they are a part of me and I testify that they are true. I love this gospel and I am grateful for the opportunity I have had to be in the Holy Land and strengthen my testimony of these precious truths. Sister Skinner closed the lesson by referring to Lot's wife. She was commanded not to look back, and yet she did. Heavenly Father wants us to look forward in faith. I don't know exactly what is going to happen when I leave this place, in fact I don't even really know what will happen in the next twenty-four hours. I do know that my Heavenly Father has a plan for me though and that he will guide me to do the things I need to be doing and so I have no fear as I put my heart in his hand and look forward to each and every day and the surprised it may bring. Goodness gracious, I do love church here! It has become a special and sacred time and I hope to keep those three hours once a week sacred and special for the rest of my life.

Garden Tomb: It is simply amazing that after having such a wonderful church meeting I then have the opportunity to visit sacred and holy sites. Today we went to the Garden Tomb and sometimes I feel like it will be hard to feel the spirit after walking down and uphill in the heat and being sweaty and just feeling disgusting, and when I walked in there wasn't an immediate presence of the spirit or anything, just a lot of people and commotion. I decided to first go inside the tomb and as I started thinking about the events that had taken place at this site, or at a site similar to this one the spirit overcame me. Once again I was alone with the spirit and my thoughts despite being in a crowd. When I was done looking inside I took a walk around the beautiful garden surrounding it. There are several nice paths leading to different quiet spots and I was trying to find a place where I could be all by myself and just have some alone time. Well, that's exactly what all the other Mormon kids were doing, so every quiet alone spot was taken. As I walked to the place where you could see Golgatha from I was once again filled with the spirit. I sat on a bench and pulled out my scriptures and compared the picture in my scriptures to the sight before me and they were perfect matches. I've heard the story of the crucifixion and I've been told it could have been here, but putting my scriptures up to the site I knew that whether or not these events occurred here, the events did occur. The spirit was just so strong and I just felt so much peace. I sat for a little while and then walked around the garden just admiring the beauty and then I found a special alone spot for me. It was surrounded by green and just felt right. Today I wanted to ready the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection from all four gospel writers, so that's what I did, starting in the book of Matthew. Just like in Gethsemane I loved reading the four right in a row so I could get all the details at once and see the differences and the similarities. I feel that as I read these writers books I get to know them and their character better, and also I come to better understand their relationship with the Savior. Their relationships are examples to me and help me know how and what kind of relationship I can build with my Savior. So my alone spot turned out to be not so alone, but it ended up being a good thing. A tour group came and sat near me and as the tour guide bore his testimony I was grateful to be hearing it. It is a testimony builder to me when people not of our religion bear testimony to the things we believe in. I know that this man testified of truths and I know that he believes them for the same reason I do. He can feel them and the spirit whispers that these things are true to his heart and his mind. When I was all done reading I went down to the tomb once again and entered in and me and Rachel made a short little video sharing some of the thoughts we had that day and whatnot, and then of course we took a couple pictures and then caught a bus back to the center. We are the first group they have allowed to take buses and it is kind of an experiment of sorts, but I am grateful to be the guinea pig because it made it so we could stay in the garden longer and still not be late to dinner.

Temple Recommend & Musical Fireside: I broke my fast and ate dinner as soon as I got back, and as I broke my fast I realized how grateful I am for fast Sundays. I was literally excited to start my fast last night and I didn't feel hungry at all today. I think I finally understand the power of fasting and I know it is a blessing that I have the good health to be able to fast and I am thankful for the opportunity I have to fast each and every month. One thing I fasted for was that the last two weeks I have here I will be able to feel the spirit and feel close to my Savior and my Father in Heaven and already today I feel like I have been blessed in that way. After dinner I checked my emails and wrote some and then I got a temple interview. President Okiishi interviewed me and as he asked me the questions I couldn't help thinking how happy I was that I could answer those questions and be worthy to receive a temple recommend. Even though I haven't been able to use my recommend here I am glad I brought it as a reminder to be worthy of holding a recommend at all times and I know when I go home and see "Jerusalem Branch" written on my recommend I will be reminded of the spirit in that office as Brother Okiishi asked me about my testimony of important gospel principles. After my interview I journaled about my day and then we had a musical fireside that consisted of a large number of musical pieces put together by the students here. I appreciate the time and effort the students put into preparing those pieces and I also appreciate the spirit they brought to the fireside. My very favorite number was a piece Bridgette wrote. She knew she wanted to write a song when she came and she wrote a beautiful song called "I Will Know". When she performed it she sang and played the piano and just sounded great and brought such a strong spirit to the room. Some people have a spiritual gift of being able to bring the spirit to a room quickly and Bridgette definitely is able to bring the spirit through her music. She explained that her song is her testimony and I think that is why it meant even more to her and to all of us. It was a quiet and peaceful fireside where we were able to enjoy the talents of people in our group and feel the spirit music can bring. I think in my next ward I would like to join the choir to strengthen my testimony on the power of music.

After the fireside we had branch prayer and it was super long because they are trying to get everybody sneeched on before we leave here. We sang Praise to the Man, one of my favorite hymns, and heard lots of testimonies and it was just a good branch prayer. After that we started a movie with Emily Willis but I was tired and decided just to sleep through the movie, and the other girls thought both movies they started were lame, so they ended up just turning them off and going to bed too.

Friday July 31st

2009-08-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

It's my mom's birthday! I tried to call her, but got her answering machine. Too bad, I'll have to try again tomorrow. Today we had NT and ANE in the morning and then we were taught by our home teachers – yes I know it was the very last day of the month, but we got home taught.

Home Teaching: So for our lesson Carrie talked about the worth of souls. He quoted the scripture saying that the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. We then went around the group, and each person told the person to their left why they thought their soul was of worth. Trisha was on my right and when it came to her I received one of the nicest compliments I have ever received. Trisha said she loved me because I was concerned about her welfare and just loved her and talked to her and gave great advice. What I really loved is that she said she loves talking to me because when she does she feels the spirit. I found this to be somewhat interesting because yes I have felt the spirit when talking to Trish, but I haven't noticed anything really different and I didn't think I was doing anything special to invite the spirit. I am grateful that together we are able to bring the spirit into our conversations and I know that the good advice comes from that spirit and not from me. I got to compliment Matt and my favorite quality about Matt is that he has such a great desire to do good. He truly just wants to be good and do good things and he also has the discipline to do those good things and I think that is really admirable. So as you can tell home teaching was great and I think it was a good note to end on.

After that it was time to work out. Mason and I went for a run outside the center and went two miles and I felt pretty good. My leg bothered me a little, but wasn't painful. Dustin said I can run as long as I'm not limping, and I'm totally planning to push myself super hard the rest of the time here and just work hard to be in shape. I decided to bike an hour and a half which is equivalent to about 7.5 miles, so that means I got 9.5 miles of training in today and I feel pretty good about that. I felt good and I didn't hurt and I loved it! Boy it's great to really get a good work out in, it reminds me why I love running so much. I showered and barely made it to lunch before the doors closed and then I blogged and blogged until 2:15. We had our humanitarian service thing at 2:30 and I went to help set up. We made hygiene kits for a handicapped program for the month of Ramadam. It was the huge assembly line thing we've done all semester and it was a lot of fun. We had visitors come and help, so that meant we had a little break in the middle with refreshments! They feed us chocolate bread here that is amazing! Oh, and all the fruit is top notch too. We play music and dance and talk and serve and it is just a really great time. I love service. After that I blogged some more and then duh duh duh – dinner time. Then at 7:00 we had a foosball tournament and Rachel and I were on a team together. We were originally going to be on different teams, but both of our partners dropped out, so it worked out perfect. We had a really fun time and played a bunch of games. We beat everyone we played except Brent. I hate to admit it, but he was good, and he knew he was good, which is why I hate to admit that he was good. The only annoying thing was that they were waiting for people to get back from synagogue to start the real tourney, so we were just playing games. The synagogue people didn't get home until after 9:00 pm, and we had already been going for two hours and I was worn out and we were just kind of through with it. So we borrowed The Curious Case of Benjamin Button from Elise and all settled down on our mattresses and watched the movie. I'd only seen the first hour and I wanted to see the rest, but even now I don't know how I feel. It was interesting, but I wouldn't call it cute. It was just kind of weird and ended a little sad and I don't feel the need to see it again. It was a fun night though just talking and enjoying the roomies company, it's going to be strange not living with these girlies when I leave here. After the movie we chit chatted then went to sleep.

Thursday July 30th

2009-08-10T14:12:00.005-07:00

It's Christmas in Jerusalem today! Ok, so not really, but there is a Christmas program on our field trip tonight, so we decided to celebrate Christmas all day. This means playing Christmas music at every possible opportunity, including over breakfast and in the gym. Another exciting thing about today is that it is the two week mark. In two weeks I will be getting on a flight heading home! Wow, that is unbelievable! So this morning was cleaning checks, and with Annie moving back it was the easiest cleaning checks ever because she did so much! We passed with flying colors and got kit katish candy bars called Mementos and they were very good. Trish didn't want hers so she gave it to me, so I thought I'd be nice and share it with people sitting around me in New Testament, and nobody would accept free chocolate. Ok, so Monica and Eric did, but still, I offered it to three people before someone said yes and I was very surprised. New Testament was two hours today with a ten minute break in between the two hours. Brother Masters' class only had one hour so they were done when we were on break and I was so jealous. I love what we are learning but I'm sick of sitting in classes, it will be good to have a little break between these classes and fall semester. Luckily the two semesters consist of very different classes so it'll be a fresh start in fall. After class Annie and I worked out together and I love having a work out buddy. First we stretched and read scriptures out loud as we stretched. Then we rode on the bikes together and talked to Emily Page all about her wedding plans, the colors, the dresses, the decorations, just everything. It was kind of funny though because Annie was planning a wedding and now she's not getting married anymore, so she has her colors and dress and everything already done and she doesn't have a boy. Oh, and Emily isn't even engaged yet, so that added to the funniness. Isaac was in biking at the same time as us and if I was him I would have been cracking up as three girls are sitting there talking about weddings when none of us is even engaged. I got in a really good work out today. I biked an hour and then ran a mile and did abs and a lot of stretching and it just felt great. After working out I showered and went to lunch and then worked on my blog for a little. We had a field trip at 2:30 and at about 2:15 Annie came in and told me she was supposed to read the Christmas story at the Christmas program that night and asked if she should do anything special. Well, a Christmas pageant came to mind and we rushed to grab costumes and props for our pageant. We wrote the script on the bus and put hymns with it and ok'd it with Brother Huff and were super excited!

Herod's Summer Palace: Our first stop on the field trip was King Herod's Summer Palace. It is a very nice place and it must have been quite a site back in the day, but now it is kind of ancient and just plain dusty and dirty. We saw the cisterns there and where the baths would have been. We saw the synagogue, the living quarters, and the main tower. Herod died at his winter palace that we saw earlier in the summer, but was buried at his summer palace. It is on a man-made mountain that looks like a volcano with the top cut off and included many big pools. It was the baby's in the surrounding area, including Bethlehem, that King Herod had killed because he feared that this Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews was a threat to him and his reign. It was fun looking around at his palace, my favorite thing was probably the cannon balls he left behind. Yep, huge rock cannonballs that would have been flung in a catapult of sorts, or simply rolled down the hill onto some unfortunate enemy.

Plains of Judea: After this stop we headed towards the plain of Judea. On the bus Brother Brown approached me and Annie and told us we were not allowed to bring sheets or bed covers from the center out of our bedroom (that's what we had grabbed for angel and wise men costumes). We apologized and told him we had forgotten and then told him what their purpose was. We asked him if we could still use them and at first he was reluctant, but then said it would be ok if we put them in something safe to take out, told the people wearing them to not let them touch the ground, and then put them back in our safe container after. Well, we didn't really have a big garbage bag or something like that on us, but we did have my little Nike backpack. We tried to fit it all in, but it wasn't working out so well. Then I started looking around the bus and found a pillow and decided to use the pillow case. It was a tender mercy of the Lord that I was able to find that pillowcase in our time of need. When I took of the pillowcase I found another pillowcase underneath! Wow, Heavenly Father really will help us out in our time of need. We were able to fit everything in the two bags and took it all out onto Judea's plain. We had time to eat dinner and just found big rocks to sit on. Dinner was sack lunches from the center, thank you JC kitchen staff for always making sack lunches for us! About six we started our program, the pageant was the first thing. Annie was the narrator and she did a really good job and I think she was proud of what she did. Rachelle was Mary and she had a legit Bethlehem blanket wrapped around a water bottle and of course a little head scarf. Jonah was Joseph and he totally rolled his eyes when we asked him to be a part of our pageant, but he did a great job. It was so cute, he put his arm around Rachelle and just guided her to Bethlehem and then looked at our water bottle in a blanket and really got into the part. We had Bethany and Hannah as angels, dressed in our white sheets that didn't touch the ground! Our wise men were Alex, Tyler and Chadwick and they were dressed in kafias and then our bedspreads from the center as capes. Our shepherds were Eric, Russell and Brother Huff and they also had kafias and then Audrey and Regan were there sheep and they wore white hats. They were super cute and baa'd at all of us and I think they had a fun time. It ended up being a really cute pageant and I think everyone had a lot of fun. I couldn't help just feeling so much gratitude for my parents during that program. I am so blessed to have been raised in the church and been able to do a Christmas pageant with my family each year. Not only do I know the bible and Book of Mormon stories I have learned in my youth, but I also have learned how to organize things like pageants. We were able to whip that thing together so fast and it turned out really well and I know it's because of things I learned from my parents, so thank you Mom and Dad. After the pageants we had a Christmas story from Steven, and then Lydia told us about what happened in the BOM when Christ was born. Brent played the guitar and sang Silent Night with Mandy and Mariah and then later Andy, Mariah, Camille and Isaac sang O Come All Ye Faithful and then we had a story from Brother Huff. He told us the story of the soldiers and the Christmas truce and it reminded me that truly Christmas is a time of peace and love and good will towards all men and I think that is why I love it so much. We finished off the night with testimonies, then a closing hymn and prayer. It was a great night on Judea's plain and I loved it! I have loved listening to and singing Christmas music all day and I think I might even keep it up for a couple more days.

The Bus: So as we were waiting to board the bus I realized that the 50 oz of water I had drunken for dinner wasn't going to stay in me much longer and I was getting a little desperate. I know everybody wants to know all about this part of my life, but I ended up hiking down the side of the plain of Judea and finding some nice olive trees that would work as good cover and there I took care of business and luckily had a napkin from dinner to help me out. I am somewhat proud to say that I am the only person out of all 79 students that was able to truly leave their mark on Judea's plain today. When I got on the bus I couldn't find the pillow I had stolen the pillowcases from anywhere. I made an announcement on the bus and nobody claimed them. At this point I was thinking that Heavenly Father had put the pillowcases there just for me to find and that there was no pillow anymore. I was convinced this was the case when Brother Huff suggested I asked the bus driver. So I did and they ended up being his, but I still consider being able to find those pillowcases a tender mercy and I am so thankful we were able to have our pageant on the plain of Judea.

Trisha & the Secret Vine & Bed: When we got back to the center Trish asked me if I was hungry and I said a little and so she said she had a surprise for me. She was being all secretive and wouldn't tell me where we were going and took me up to the 5^th floor, and then to the 6^th, and then to the 7^th and then outside. I was confused at this point since she said we were getting food. Then she took me to the western wall of the center, the one I go and sit on when I'm homesick during church and there she showed me something absolutely marvelous. It was ripe green grapes! A big vine of them! We sat on the wall with our feet dangling and just talked about life and everything and it was a really good night. It was shockingly cold though, so after a while we went inside. I am very glad that Trisha has been my roommate here in Jerusalem and that I have been able to get to know her so well. She is a very good girl and has a very good heart, I look up to her and her wonderful example. After our little adventure we went to our room and played Christmas music as we got ready for bed. Then I journaled and stretched with Annie a little and then went to bed!

Wednesday July 29th

2009-08-10T14:12:00.003-07:00

Today we had one hour of New Testament and then I went on a run with Mason. We went about a mile and a half, and my leg was bothering me, but I stopped before it hurt too much. I then hopped on the bike for a while, showered and got ready for the day. Alyssa, Rachel and I went out on the Old City during our free time. I had to run to the post office and they both had a couple errands to run and so we got all that good stuff done. It was a nice lazy day, just taking our time walking around the city and getting what we needed to. At the post office it was crazy as it always is. You literally walk in the door and take a number and then sit and wait until your number pops up on the TV screen and then you go to the window it says on the screen. I am very thankful they use the same numbers we use in the English language or I would have been rather lost! For lunch we had sack lunches that included cheese pita sandwiches, as in pita with just cheese inside. I wasn't too excited about that and neither was Alyssa so we stopped by the famous 7 shekel falafel shop. It is right inside Damascus gate and they have the yummiest sauce ever. I had never been, but pretty much everybody else at the center has. You know, I didn't use to like falafels but now they are kind of growing on me, what is happening to me! I am loving the smells and foods here more and more, I might even miss them! When we were all pretty pooped we went back to the center and had a little bit of time before dinner which I spent cleaning out my stuff and figuring out exactly what else I need to get in the Old City before we leave and I just listened to music and enjoyed myself and then Rach showed me a bunch of pictures from last summer on her computer. We are both just kind of homesick and ready to go home, but we've decided we just really needed to live up the last two weeks now because when we go home we'll probably wish we were still in Jerusalem. Dinner tonight was a Ramadan celebration! So one month of the year the Muslim people fast from sun up to sundown. This year it doesn't fall until August, but as a cultural experience we did a little Ramadan dinner. Before dinner we met in the forum where we heard part of the Koran sung, and we also listened to the call to prayer sung by a sheik, two actually, it was a father and his son. We also got to see them say their prayers. Every single day I hear the call to prayer on the loud speaker things all over the city, but I've never actually seen somebody singing it and it was neat to be able to connect this song we always hear to real people who really pray five times a day. The food for dinner was . . . interesting. Let's just say I left hungry. There was lamb cooked with rice and other stuff that wasn't bad, but it just tasted fatty and like a casserole gone bad kind of. There were some salads that were minty in a way and not your typical salad, but decent tasting. Desert was my favorite. There was kanaffe, and I like it even better than the stuff I had in the old city. It was sweeter and not as cheesy. I also had hot chocolate which was wonderful. That is a staple in life, hot chocolate all year round! After dinner we all went into the gym and did folk dancing. There were these three guys from a folk dancing team who came and taught us how to dance and we all got in one big circle and did the dance together. It was a very fun night! After Ramadan was the highlight of my day – talking to my family! I got to talk to them for a really long time just about everything. I love talking to them when they are just going about their day, it makes me feel like I'm right with them. They were on the way to Trafalga for one of our summer field trips. I would love to be home spending time with them, and I would also love for them to be here with me experiencing all this crazy stuff. Soon though we'll all be together again! After talking with my family I tried Dustin and got a hold of him. I talked to him about my leg and got advice on what to do and my mom has been talking to Dr. Faux and they are going to work some stuff out and hopefully we can get my leg worked out before cross country starts because I really would love to be able to not only compete this season, but be competitive as well. After talking to Dustin it was late late late, so I got ready for bed and turned in!

Tuesday July 28th

2009-08-10T14:12:00.001-07:00

Somewhat of a normal day at the center. We had NT and then ANE and then announcements and a linen exchange. We haven't changed our sheets since before Galilee and it was about time. Somehow our room has become infested with ants the last month or so even though we've been trying to be cleaner and cleaner. We don't even leave food sitting around even more. Our floor is crawling with ants though and if I ever sit on the floor I find ants crawling on me – not fun. Luckily they haven't gotten into my bed yet, but I can't say the same for Rachel and Trisha. I am OCD about making my bed everyday though so that my sheets aren't left open to bug infestation. Lunch came and went and then I got a workout in. Mason was supposed to run with me, but kind of bailed for a nap, but that's ok. It was a pretty unproductive day, after working out I just sat around listening to music and whatnot. Rach showed me a bunch of pictures from last summer on her computer. We are both just kind of homesick and ready to go home, but we've decided we just really need to live up the last two weeks now because when we go home we'll probably wish we were still in Jerusalem. After pictures it was time for dinner and then right after dinner was our informal talent show. A bunch of people put acts together, some were real talents and some were just real funny. We had people playing I Am a Child of God on glass pop bottles, and a synchronized swimming routine done behind blue bedspreads so it looked like they were in the water. I loved the two youtube knock-offs. One group acted out the Potter Puppet Pals thing, and another did the Faster, Better, Stronger dance and it was just fun to see. We had so many acts that we got an intermission where we got refreshments in the Oasis. It was a fun night and there was a lot of laughing. Afterwards I was pretty pooped and it was late too, so I gave my family a quick call and then it was lights out.

Monday July 27th

2009-08-10T14:11:00.007-07:00

Monday means it's a field trip day! Today we were going to stuff all inside the Old City. We took vans to New Gate and it took forever to drive there! I really think we could have walked there almost as fast, but it was more enjoyable to sit in a nice air conditioned vehicle then to sweat as you go up and down hill and then up again. I was in Brother Huff's group and our first stop was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Church of the Holy Sepulcher: So I've been to this church about a bazillion times but this time we had good old Brother Huff to explain all the little details I hadn't even noticed. The tomb they believe Christ was laid in is now being held together by metal bar things and I guess the reason they don't build a new one is because all the different churches who own a part of the Holy Sepulcher can't agree on one way to build it, so they just leave an ancient structure that could collapse at any moment and but metal through and around it to help. So there it is all one church, but inside are a bunch of small churches or just places of remembrance for different events and people.

Joseph's Room: There is a room for Joseph, Christ's earthly father. It is a stone room that has an odd looking broken mirror thing. On one side there is a good sized hole in the wall that leads to some ancient tombs that have been there for years and years. In this room Brother Huff told us all about the different churches that have some claim over the church and about some rules and regulations they've set and it's just kind of crazy. Every single religion is just so stubborn and doesn't want to give anything to any of the other religions. As a result none of them get to do anything and they are all just kind of stuck, but they bring it upon themselves so I don't even feel bad.

Lutheran Church: We went into the Lutheran chapel place and I think the coolest part was the art on one of the walls. There were these metal cutouts of Christ and the cross and it showed almost a flipbook image spanning the wall showing how he received it, carried it, and then was placed upon it. In the office next to the chapel there is a sword that is from crusader times that was exciting to see.

Prison of Christ: In one room in the Holy Sepulcher they think Christ was held as a prisoner. They think that his feet went into the rock on the ground and then he was bound underneath so there was no way he could get out. Now those holes have a glass case over them and people throw notes and prayers in.

Other places inside: They had one place dedicated to the person who stabbed him with a spear, one dedicated to Helena near the place where she found a piece of the cross Christ was crucified on. It honors her and the work she put into finding these holy sites. In the church by Helen's church there are a bunch of crusader crosses on the wall and I guess that when people used to visit this church they would leave crosses on the wall showing they had been there. There is one place in the church where you have a piece of rock surrounded by a glass case and this is just to show you that a long time ago the whole place was part of a mountain and that mountain was carved away to build the church and other things in the Old City. The upper area was very pretty and was decorated with a mosaic ceiling and lots of gold and flashy decorations.

Outside: Outside there is still a ladder standing and I guess once upon a time it was erected to feed a prisoner inside the building and then the rule was made that nothing could be changed in the building unless all the churches agreed, so the ladder is still standing there today. The door has a really cool lock system and every night they lock the building up at 11:00 pm whether there are people still inside or not – how fun would it be to spend the night in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher? Yeah, I know, too bad I would get sent home for that. The keys are inside the building and so you have to have a key to open the metal thing on the door that opens to where the key is, and then you take the key out and unlock the door and then replace it. It's almost like a lock box of sorts. They used to have some really big locks to keep the building secure, but now they just use the smaller ones. There is a pillar in front that is cracked almost all the way up and apparently it was some kind of miracle that was done outside the church that caused it to crack. There are a lot of stories that are pure tradition, but they sure make the place more interesting. That was it for the Holy Sepulcher.

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer Cloister: Next we went to the Lutheran church of the redeemer which is right next to the church Brother Whipple played in on Sunday. There is a courtyard in the middle that is green and beautiful. From there you could see the tower that stretches above the church. After talking in the courtyard we went into a chapel and sang some hymns from their hymn books. I lost my voice so I wasn't able to actually sing, but I did listen. There were almost 1000 hymns and there were a bunch of African American hallelujah kind of songs and it was just very enjoyable, I was sad I couldn't sing along.

Saint Marks: This church is one of the two sites people believe the Upper room was at. We weren't actually able to go inside because the nun had stepped outside for a moment, but I'm hoping to go back and be able to go in. There are so many important events and lessons taught in the upper room, perhaps the greatest being the last supper. Some believe that the upper room is in Mark's home. The same Mark who wrote the gospel of Mark. Although he wasn't apostle it makes sense that it was his home that had the upper room since he was very wealthy and was Paul's mission companion at one point and he associated with the Savior quite frequently. Brother Huff told us some crazy stories about the nun there that make me want to go back and meet her. I guess that she has healed several people, including a woman who had a cancerous growth in her stomach. The woman was scheduled to go to Tel Aviv the next morning to have a surgery done to remove the cancer. She went to St. Mark's to receive a blessing and this nun reached through her belly and massaged the cancer until it all disappeared. The next morning the woman went in for her surgery and the doctors told her that the cancer was completely gone! It truly was a miracle. I asked Brother Huff how people outside our church could have this kind of power to heal when they didn't have the priesthood or anything like unto it. He told me that we all come with spiritual gifts and he believes one of those is the gift of healing. He believes that for some reason or another Heavenly Father has blessed this woman with the ability to heal. This reminded me of a man I met on the way to the cross country conference meet in California. Katy Andrews and I started talking to him and soon found out he was an evangelist on his way to California to meet with a group to fast and pray before the elections. He started asking us about the church and what we believed and in turn told us about his church and what he believed. He told us he had traveled to Fiji and Samoa and some other Tongan islands teaching the gospel. This man told us that on one island he met a blind man who asked him to heal him. So this man laid his hands upon the blind man's head and called on the power of God and was able to heal this man. The guy on the plane also told us about an experience healing a crippled man as well. I remember going home and asking Brother Bott how somebody without the priesthood could possibly call on the name of God and heal someone and I don't know, it just didn't click in my brain. He explained to me that although the priesthood is important, it is not by priesthood alone that a person is healed. The person needing to be healed must have the faith to be healed, and the person giving the blessing must have faith as well. Even more important than faith is the will of the Father. Even if the faith is there, and the priesthood is there, if it is not the will of the Father then the blessing will not heal the person. If the priesthood is not there, and the faith is not there, but the will of the Father is for the person to be healed, that person will be healed. A big part of the priesthood is the priesthood holder identifying his blessing with the will of the Father, and not the other way around. This is still a hard concept for me to swallow, but it gives me confidence that everything that happens in my life is by the will of the Father, for better or worse. I am thankful for the priesthood in my life and that Heavenly Father has a plan for me not only in this mortal life, but for the eternities.

Terra Sancta: Next we went to another church in the Old City and at this one we met a very interesting monk named Father Angelo. He speaks ten languages, loves jokes, and is just a very happy smiley man. He told us a little bit about his job and the church he works in, and he also explained how some phrases we use nowadays came from Medieval times which was random but great. He took us to a little side room where people were working on sewing monk robes and showed us a door. This door is very special to Mormon's because on it is carved Hyde – as in Orson Hyde. When Orson Hyde visited in the 1800's and dedicated the Holy Land he carved his name into that door. I still can't believe Orson Hyde came so long ago and because he came the Mormon's have had a place in Jerusalem ever since.

Alexander Nevsky: Finally, the last church of the day. This church was one of my favorites. It wasn't really ornate or beautiful, but it had some ruins that date back to the time of Herod. The Russians were building a hotel when they found these ancient ruins, and so they decided to build a church around them instead of tearing them down for a hotel. These ruins include part of the original wall of Jerusalem and you can see what is called the eye of a needle. Each night the gates to the city were closed, but there was a small doorway that a man would have to crouch to pass through. This doorway allowed for people to get in to the city after the gate was closed, but there is no possible way a Camel or horse could have fit. In the Bible it says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to make it to the kingdom of God and this doorway is most likely what the scripture refers to. There is no possible way a camel, even a baby camel could ever come through. My favorite part of the church was the big paintings of the Savior hanging up. They depicted Christ's last walk starting from the last supper and ending with his resurrection. I appreciated how the artist made all the pictures not dark and dreary, but bright, beautiful and hopeful. These paintings really brought a good spirit to the church. The atonement and death of our Savior are very sad and solemn events, but at the same time it is these events combined with the resurrection that make our life so perfectly complete and allow us to be a part of our Heavenly Father's plan of salvation.

The Roof: After the last church we had some free time before the vans would be there to pick us up, so a group of us decided to go do a little exploring. We went up on the rooftops of the city and just walked along looking down onto some of the city streets. We were standing on the roofs of shops and homes. We saw some Jewish men leaving their homes with briefcase in hand, and we could hear families through open windows and smell food being cooked and it was just a fun atmosphere. From the roofs we also had a great view of the Dome of the Rock and of course took some pictures with it. After that we loaded the buses and headed back to the center.

Studying & Bed: I spent the rest of my day getting a work out in and then studying like a mad man. I knew I had a quiz in New Testaments, and was 99% sure that we'd be having one in ANE since he didn't give us one last time. My brain was fried after a couple of hours, so I decided to go to bed early but none of my roommates were following suit. People kept coming and going and talking, and normally I would be able to sleep through it all pretty well, but with my sour throat I kept waking up. Plus my sore throat would just itch and hurt and that didn't help matters, but I finally did get to sleep after a while.

Sunday July 26th

2009-08-10T14:11:00.005-07:00

Free day and this time we decided to go on an adventure in West Jerusalem, and a little bit of the Old City too. We first hit up Aladdin's and actually got pictures there! It was about time.

Lutheran Church and Brother Whip: Then we headed to the Lutheran church by the Holy Sepulcher to hear Brother Whipple play the organ. It was pretty funny, we had almost 40 of us gathered up on the top floor all sitting on random chairs and stools and on the floor, crowding around the organ. Brother Whipple is a very talented organ player and it sounded absolutely wonderful.

Supreme Court: After listening to him play for a while we headed to the Supreme Court building! We had a tour scheduled so we were booking it over, but actually ended up being way early which was good since we had to go through all this security and it kind of took a long time. The tour was great, there is so much symbolism in that building. The main theme was tying the new with the old. One wall looked like walls in the Old City and they had old city steps to match, and then the other wall was a plain white plaster wall. There was a big glass window looking over the city, the western part anyway. You couldn't really see the Old City, just the newer part where all the Israeli's live. My favorite part was probably the library and I know my dad would have loved it. There are three floors of books and books from all different countries, but they are only law books. There is a pyramid in the middle of the roof and then the library is a half circle on one side of the triangle and it was just beautiful. There are five court rooms because they have 15 judges and there are 3 at every case. The biggest one holds 140 people, it kind of surprised me that it only held so few. There were two that held 50 and two that held 30. We had the cutest little lady showing us around, she made the tour interesting and fun. At one point Rachel pointed out how long my hair was and took a picture to show me, but then I took a picture of hers and then I realized my hair really isn't that long, but it's really long for me! In our tour group there was an older gentleman who had a number tattoo on his arm and Kyle was talking to him and found out he is a holocaust survivor! Those who survive all seem like heroes in my book. I had a great time at the Supreme Court and would strongly recommend going to anyone.

Knesset: This was our last destination of the day. Here the security was even tighter. We couldn't take anything in with us, we checked all our bags and stuff in at a desk. We had to have our passport to get in and then waited in a lobby filled with rows of chairs for an English tour guide. They first showed us the room where the Knesset meets and it basically looks like where the House and Senate in the states meet. We sat in seats on the second level and behind us was a third level with glass diving it from us. The Knesset was not in session which was really too bad, I'd like to go back when they are in session. After seeing that room we walked around and saw all the artwork and pretty much everything in there was done by Shagal. I wasn't able to take any pictures because they took our cameras, but there were three huge tapestry things that stretched from the floor to the ceiling and they were . . . unique. No, they were awesome, but he likes to leave his work open to interpretation and he did. Anyway, it was a fun visit, but I liked the Supreme Court more. After we were done there we called for a van. While we were waiting Rachel was showing us a robe she bought in the Old City earlier that morning and it's this cute silky zebra robe and she was just modeling for us on the side walk, and I realized how funny this could be if somebody walked by and how strange it must seem to the people driving by. Ha ha, I love us and our silliness. When the van came we pilled in and the van ride back was hilarious! Dan and Callie were in the back talking all about Dan's love life, but they weren't being very quiet about it and all of us on the seat in front of them were sitting there cracking up at what they were saying.

JC: When we got back I got a workout in and then it was dinner time and then the night just seemed to fly socializing and having fun and then it was bedtime! Ta da -

Saturday July 25th

2009-08-10T14:11:00.003-07:00

I only have three more Shabbats here, crazy! Today was a good day, I woke up, went to breakfast and then got ready. Brother Huff challenged while in Galilee to get up before church one morning, get ready early and be to church early and prepared and see if it makes a difference. So, I took the challenge. I was in my seat thirty minutes before the meeting started and I listened to the choir practice and just read my scriptures and it was a good feeling to not be walking in as Brother Okiishi was conducting. I felt the spirit with me stronger than in previous meetings and I also felt happier, more at peace, and just more prepared to receive the messages from the speakers. I think it changed my attitude about all three meetings and I definitely want to keep it up. All three meetings went wonderfully, I greeted in Relief Society and I've got the system down. I grab a stack of hymn books from the cupboard and stand by the door and pass them out as I welcome everyone to Relief Society. As people come in I ask them if they will say the opening and closing prayer, and then tell whoever is conducting that day. I think it's been a fun calling and has helped me remember to start of the meeting with a positive attitude because I have to be happy and welcoming each and every week even when I'm not feeling so happy inside. In Relief Society Lisa taught us about the conference talk "Be of Good Cheer" by President Monson and I listened to this talk the night we got back from Galilee. It felt good to already know the talk and be able to contribute more fully to the discussion because I was better prepared. I think this was a tender mercy of Heavenly Father, helping me understand how listening to the spirit and trying to prepare for church meetings can really change the experience you have in those meetings. After church I worked on a written piece for a book we are compiling. Steven and Isaac have arranged to have a book that everyone contributes to and they are going to print a bound copy of it when we leave here and make it so everyone can buy it for a good price. Some people are writing about places we visited, others are writing about things we learned in class, and still others are writing their reflections on the experience. It will be a little memory book of sorts with a little piece of everyone here. I decided to write a piece about all the different, unique people coming together and becoming best friends and just having a great experience together. I wanted to get across the point that each person has an effect on the people around them and since we are here together, the people we are with have largely influenced our experience. It is the relationships and the things we learn from each other that I believe will last through the centuries, not necessarily what year Pompeii came to Jerusalem or other things like that. When I was done writing Rachel, Kristin and I decided to make a trip to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Gethsemane: Today when I walked into Gethsemane I sat down on a little plastic stool by one of the walls and immediately the spirit filled my heart. It was funny in a way because at this time there was a group of Ethiopians in the garden doing some kind of meeting or service and they were yelling and talking loudly, but I was just in my own little corner and I felt the spirit. Brother Huff had talked to us in class about being alone in a crowd. He talked about being able to separate yourself from what is going on around you and focusing on the things you needed to and at this moment my Heavenly Father provided a tender mercy to me and helped me feel of his spirit despite the commotion around me. I am very thankful for that experience I was able to have in the garden today and I testify that even when we are surrounded by chaos the still small voice is there and we can hear him if we listen with our spiritual ears and focus on what the spirit is trying to tell us. This visit to the garden I decided I wanted to read the story of the atonement in each of the four gospels since we are studying the New Testament right now. In class we learned the background of each of the four gospels and the audiences they are writing to and it was really cool to know this and then read their version of the last supper and Christ suffering in Gethsemane. The most intriguing to me was John's record. Most likely John wrote his book quite some time after the other three gospel writers. This makes perfect sense because when you read his gospel he leaves out the story line the other three gospel writers included, but then he adds in all these details that you don't get in the other three gospels. It was neat to read these four writers' stories back to back because it made clear the differences and similarities and it also helped me to see the personality of each of the writers through their means of expression. I am so thankful for the New Testament and for the opportunity I have to study it here and I truly love the bible now in a way I never did before. The God of the Old and New Testament is the same God of the Book of Mormon, and today we receive direction from this same God through the voice of his latter-day prophets. I know President Monson is a true prophet and I will follow his counsel. When it was getting close to dinner we took a couple pictures and then headed back to the center.

After dinner I worked on Old Testament for a while and emailed and posted the blogs I have finished. It was quite fun, Trisha, Rachel and I sat outside on our balcony with our table and all worked on our own little projects and played some pretty piano music and just had good roommate bonding time. I wrote letters to my family until branch prayer. For our theme tonight we did Christmas in July and sang all Christmas songs, which I absolutely love! I love Christmas music, and I think every summer I go through a phase where all I want to listen to is Christmas music. After branch prayer Mason came up to me and told me he wanted to go running in the morning, he wants to push it the last three weeks! Yes, I have a running buddy ladies and gents! So since that meant I would need to get up early to run, it also meant that I went to bed early as well.

Friday July 24th

2009-08-10T14:11:00.001-07:00

Back from Galilee and it's a free day. I relaxed in the morning and then got a workout in and got wash done and then in the afternoon we went to Harry Potter! The 6^th one! A lot of people made shirts and dressed up, I ended up with a last minute lightning bolt on my forehead. We all took vans to this mall and the movie theater was inside. It was crazy to see a Israeli mall, not kidding, they had a keppa kiosk. Yep, that's an Israeli mall for you. We all bought our tickets and then went and sat in the theater. Then as more and more people came this guy came and shined a flashlight in my face and told me I was in the wrong seat, I was thinking "you've gotta be kidding me" but then talked to the guy and found out it was assigned seating. Yeah, welcome to Israel. So since we were in a group of oblivious Americans they assigned my group all seats on the front row or on the very edge. Luckily it was a small theater so nobody had a horrible seat, but they totally took advantage of the fact that we didn't know what was going on. It was frustrating that we were there twenty minutes early and yet people who came two minutes late got the best seats. It was a good learning experience. The other weird part about the movie theater was that there was an intermission. It's true, they really did stop the movie half way through so everybody could go to the bathroom and buy more treats and honestly I thought it was good. It probably makes them earn more money, and I had to go to the bathroom, so it made it so I didn't have to miss any of the movie! Maybe we should start that in America . . . after the movie we got a bus ride back to the center and then it was dinner time. After dinner time it was roommate bonding time.

Official 411 Meeting: My roommates and I have gotten into this fun habit of putting our mattresses together on the floor and watching a movie and eating pop rock chocolate and having a sleepover and this night we decided that we were going to make a sisterhood of sorts. Yes I know it's cheesy and yes we kind of stole it from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but all the same I really like it and it was a lot of fun. We started out by coming up with the name, and we are now officially the Sisterhood of the 411. We are going to get a journal when we get back to Provo and have a traveling journal. Each girl will have it for two weeks and just write about the most exciting things happening in their life and you can write your thoughts and feelings and whatever you want. We have a fun little handshake and say all sorts of obnoxious things, and then of course have to have a treat as part of the ceremony and it was just great! I seriously think this is going to last forever, even when we are married and have kids. We'll get together and sit around and eat goodies and talk about everything going on in our life and just enjoy each others' company, cause that's what the sisterhood is really all about.

Monday August 3rd

2009-08-10T14:09:00.001-07:00

Field Trip . . .

Masada: This place was pretty cool. It was about an hour and a half away on the bus and I conked out the entire ride, so when we got to Masada I was still feeling sleepy. We watched a nice little introduction movie in a dark, air-conditioned room which made it hard not to fall back asleep, but I managed. Then we loaded into these cable cars, it was funny because they got about 70 of our group in one cable car and then realized we wouldn't all fit, so they sent that group up the mountain. The other ten of us waited for the next cable car and had a fair amount of room and I am very glad I wasn't in the overcrowded first group. It was a pretty steep and long ride up and I feel very grateful to our professors for letting us ride the cable car up, because it would have been an hour of hiking in the heat to walk up. When we got there we went under a pavilion and Brother Brown told us all about the zealots who lived on Masada. So originally Herod built Masada as a fortress and him and his family would stay there from time to time, but didn't ever permanently move there. Then right before the first temple destruction n 70 AD a group of radical Jews popped up known as the zealots. They were driven by a love of independent nationhood, love of the torah, and hate for the Romans. From the Zealots an even more radical group known as the Sicarii broke off. Sicarii means dagger-men and these guys were a lot like the Gadianton robbers of the Book of Mormon. They murdered and plundered and were just up to no good. Well when the Hasmoneans took over in Jerusalem the Sicarii went up to Masada. They lived up there for a while and then the Romans came. The Sicarii/Zealots decided they would rather kill themselves than live under the Romans and so all the men made an oath to kill their wives and children. Then 11 men were appointed the job of killing every man. The last eleven all put their names on pottery shards and drew to see who would be the one to kill the last ten men, and then that man was supposed to commit suicide. The plan was carried out and when the Romans came they found only a couple women and children alive to tell the story. Yigael Yadin excavated the site and said the most important artifact they found was 9 of the 11 ostraca from the story. Masada is quite a place. It's this whole city in the middle of the desert up on a mountain with steep edges all around. Herod sure knew how to build his fortresses and palaces right, there were bath houses with vivid colors that have lasted through the ages and some beautiful churches and just everything was very well done. We saw yet another water system, this one being basically a huge cistern. When we were up on top of Masada we had an incredible view of the Dead Sea. It looks a lot like the Great Salt Lake and even has things that look like salt flats around it. After Brother Brown talked our ears off we walked around with Brother Huff, actually we ran. He said we needed to hustle in order to see everything, so we really booked it. We went from one end of Masada to the other and saw everything. Highlights included the place where they found the ostracas and the siege ramp. The original siege ramp is still in place and the Romans didn't use just a battering ram to break through the wall, they had what is called a siege machine. It has a ram on the front and is basically a battering ram though, so I don't get why it has a special name. Some of our group ran down to the bottom of the ramp to siege the place, but I was already boiling, it sure is hot in these kinds of places. I decided to settle for making a fun movie at the top of Masada and Andy was nice enough to help out and it was kind of silly but definitely fun. After that it was time to hop back on to the cable cars and on the way down I ended up in that first group that had to squish a million people in. It was already miserably hot, but it was even more horrible to then be placed in very close proximity to people who have been sweating bullets and playing in dirt for the last two hours. I did survive the ride and even enjoyed the craziness of it a little.

Ein Gedi: This stop was pretty legit. It is a nature reserve that just has a lot of places to hike and a lot of natural waterfalls and pools to swim in. We hiked up to David's waterfall, the biggest one, first. We took some pictures and played in the water a little bit, but then went down to other waterfalls to really get in. We found a waterfall that had a little cliff on the side that was perfect to jump off and spent the rest of our time there running up and jumping in again and again. Actually I think I'm one of the few who just kept going, but I think almost every single person in our group did make the jump. Ah, I had forgotten how much I love cliff jumping, it is such a thrill. The hike down dried us off most of the way and then me and Rach started talking and she told me all about these guys her and Kellyn had met at David's waterfall and they are Jews here visiting with some group from New York. Apparently these guys wanted to meet up with them at the Western Wall on Friday because both our groups are going at the same time. Man, things are getting bad, we are definitely a little boy deprived here. It's actually kind of hilarious because we all came here and thought the guys weren't cute at all and now we are all finding some Arab men and some Jews who are just stinkin cute. Anyway, after that it was back onto the buses and on to the Dead Sea.

Dead Sea: As soon as we got here we headed down to the water and walked and walked along the beach until we got to a place that wasn't crowded and had mud. We got in the water and I kind of knew what to expect after going to the Great Salt Lake last summer, but it was still a phenomenal feeling. I was walking in and it just felt like normal water, maybe a little oily and then it got to about my belly button and I lifted my foot up to take another step and it just went to the top of the water and my other leg followed! I think more of my body was out of water than in the water! It is the weirdest feeling because experience makes you believe you should be able to go under, but you just float. You could stand straight up and you still wouldn't go under, your shoulders would be out! The water is so salty and stings, but I had been warned and had made sure not to shave so I wasn't hurting too much. Once we got a pretty big group in there we all held on to each other and tried to spell BYU and one of the guys took a picture of us all floating in the Dead Sea spelling BYU, definitely an epic moment. It took forever to get in position and by the time we took the picture I was ready to get out. Brother Huff showed us how to get the good mud and then we spent forever painting this clay stuff on each other's bodies. Candace and I helped each other out and we were both covered head to toe with little rings around our eyes. It was hard to get crevices and places that weren't quite dry from swimming because it rubbed off, but we were looking pretty insane. We then took a million warrior pictures and did all sorts of silly things. I waited until my mud was mostly dry and then went back in to the Dead Sea and washed it all off. The water is just so oily you don't even feel like its water, so I think I felt even dirtier after washing the mud off. After getting all but my face clean I hopped out and went up and showered the salt and the rest of the mud off. Luckily we were able to go into changing rooms with good showers and get our bodies at least somewhat clean. While we were waiting to load the buses Mason and I hit up the snack shop to try this juice everyone was raving about and so we bought a carton to share and I don't know if it was just because I was so hot and thirsty, but it was to die for. I really think I would have given my life at that point in time for that juice, but fortunately is just cost me a few sheks. Then it was back on the bus and on to another site.

Qumran: Qumran is where all the Dead Sea scrolls were found. Yeah, I know! It was crazy. We first went in and saw a movie and it was another academy award winner. They had this whole story line about how John the Baptist lived in Qumran and it turned out to be totally made up. It was just a story line to make the movie more interesting and the movie was more about this false story line than about the actual place. Ha ha, love the movies. After that we found another pavilion and heard some more from Brother Brown. The real story was even better than the movie. These shepherds were missing a goat and went out looking for it and started throwing rocks in the caves in the area to try and scare their goat out of a cave. Well every cave echoed empty, and then after throwing a rock into another cave it sounded like something had broken. They hurriedly left so as not to get in trouble, but later curiosity got the best of them and they returned to the cave to see what was inside. They found a broken pot with a scroll in it and realized they had found something big. They found scrolls containing books of the bible and other records. After this find many other people searched caves in the area and out of 22 caves searched 11 had scrolls in them. There are still so many caves to look in and there are people still hoping to find more scrolls. These scrolls are the oldest records we have, period. They give validity not only to the bible, but to other ancient books as well. We got to see a bunch of the caves and all I can say is that people were crazy to live in those conditions back in the times when there was no air conditioning. Ok, so I can also say that it is a miracle that the dead sea scrolls were able to survive so long and it is even more of a miracle that we were able to find so many of the scrolls and in such good condition. Right after all the scrolls were found somebody photographed all of them. The scrolls have degenerated so fast since they were taken out of their dry storing pots and so now these photographs are used more than the actual scrolls by archaeologists and those studying the ancient near east. After that it was time to go home.

Home: We got back and then I had a little bit of time to veg and then me and Mason got a run and a workout in. After dinner I was pooped, but knew finals were creeping up on me. I did a little bit of studying and then rushed to bed.

Thursday July 23rd

2009-08-10T14:08:00.001-07:00

Our last field trip in Galilee . . . It was sad to board the bus and realize that we weren't going to be sleeping in Galilee that night, but we did get to see some great sites.

Sepphoris: We had a pretty long bus ride before our first stop, Sepphoris. This place was actually the capital of the Roman Empire for some time and was later the capital of the tetrarchy of Herod Antipus. The Mishnah was compiled here in 200 AD and this is one of the places in the San Hedrin moved to after being exiled from Jerusalem in result of the Bar Khokba Revolt. We went in to the visitor's center and watched a movie and then started looking around the site. There were some amazing mosaics there. They are all really old, and in really good condition. There was this big house that had a different mosaic pattern in each room. My favorite was a large mosaic representing Egypt. It had hippos and tigers and the Nile and all sorts of cool things. When we got to that mosaic there was a guy washing the floor and with all the dust removed it was so vivid and beautiful. I can only imagine what it must have been like when it was new. They make these mosaics out of tons of little squares of rock and all the colors in the mosaic are the natural colors of the rock. If you look at the mosaics carefully you can even see that some of them use shading and they are just magnificent! Sepphoris has a big room that would have been a dining room of sorts back in the day and it would have had a triclinium table. You can see where the table was and then in the middle is a mosaic of a woman. This mosaic is one of the finest and is known as the Mona Lisa of Galilee. Next we went into a synagogue that has been turned into a museum, but we just went up top to see the view. We could see the city of Nazareth from the top and it helped me get a better grasp on the geography of Galilee. Then we went to another synagogue and all that remains of this one is the mosaic floor and a few pillars. This floor was similar to another synagogue we saw because it had the god Helios in the middle and then the zodiac around that. It also portrayed the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham and some other traditional Jewish symbols. After that last synagogue it was back to the bus.

Muhraqa: This is the traditional site of where Abraham traveled to sacrifice Isaac. We went up on the rooftop of the visitor's center and read the story and talked about it. We were up on a mountain and all surrounding us was fields and fields. We took some pictures from the top and then went back to the entrance by the huge statue of Abraham and Isaac and of course got another picture. This place was set up really nice with a little garden and rock pathways that took you too these neat rock statue things. It was nice to make that stop, and then it was nice to get on the air conditioned bus and head to the next site.

Bahai Garden Overlook: This stop was even quicker than the last. Brother Huff challenged us to try and make it in less than three minutes. The bus pulled off to the side of the road and we all hopped off and ran to an overlook of the Bahai Garden. We all snapped a picture and ran back and we would have made it in under three minutes, but Russell was taking a bunch of pictures and delayed us all . . . party foul. Nobody really cared but of course we had to give him a hard time about it just because we could.

Haifa Templar Cemetery: This cemetery was basically across from the bottom of the garden. In the middle of the 19^th century there was a German Templar movement and a bunch of Germans moved in to the area. They were Evangelical Lutherans and they founded a tempelgesellschaft (temple society) and established colonies to await the second coming. Of course they eventually needed a cemetery and so built one. We didn't really study any of this, but the cool part is how this cemetery connects to the LDS church. In the 19^th century there was a mission called the Haifa, Istanbul mission. Adolph Hagg was a missionary from Payson Utah who died of typhoid in October of 1892 and was buried in this cemetery. Then John Clark was serving this mission in 1895 and died in February of smallpox. Both these men were given tombstones with a pillar cut in half to represent that their life was cut short before finishing their work. Now we obviously don't have missionaries anywhere close to this area, but the burial of these two men in the country opened up the way for the LDS church to enter the Holy Land many years later. When the church tried to enter the Holy Land they were at first denied access because no new churches were being allowed in. These men's tombs were evidence that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had already been established in the holy land and so we were able to reenter. It was neat to hear this story while standing next to the half pillar at the top of John Clark's tombstone. Brother Huff testified that Heavenly Father does prepare a way for his work to be accomplished and this is only one example of His great plan. I also testify that our Heavenly Father is very mindful of his children and of the things he knows they are capable of. We are just one human being, but if we put our life in the Lord's hands he will give us direction and he will make a masterpiece of us. Heavenly Father's plan is so perfect, I just love it! After Brother Huff bore testimony he said something along these lines: I know this might be kind of awkward, but Rachel Curtis, would you like to bear your testimony of missionary work? Rachel was quiet for a moment and then thanked Brother Huff for paying attention to the spirit. She had a lot of thoughts and feelings running through her mind since she is awaiting her mission call (it should be there when we get back from Galilee). She testified of the power of missionary work and talked about her desire to go on a mission and how she knows that just like these missionaries were able to help build up the church, as a missionary she too will be helping in that noble cause. It was touching to see and feel her love for missionary work and I am thankful she was in tune with the spirit. I am also grateful that Brother Huff was prompted by the spirit to give her an opportunity to bear her unmovable testimony. When we were done at John Clark's grave we went and found the graves of the first converts of the church in that mission and their names are Fred and Christian Kegel. I am grateful that they joined the church and added to the evidence of the church being established and I am also grateful for their example. They joined the true church even though nobody else was a member, they knew it was true and knew that they could help open the way for the church in the Holy Land. We then left the cemetery and walked down the street so some people could get falafels and the rest of us loaded onto the buses.

JC Center: Our last destination was home sweet home. We got home in time for dinner and it was wonderful! I enjoyed the food in Galilee, but this felt like home. Crazy that I'm used to all these foods at the center I had never even tried before coming to Israel and I feel at home hearing the call to prayer 5 times a day and just all these things I found so strange at first now are a comfort. I spent the evening getting a workout in and doing wash and just relaxing and getting caught up on life a little bit. Then it was bed!

Wednesday July 22nd

2009-08-10T14:06:00.001-07:00

Today we had another field trip and as excited as I was for the field trip I was not happy that I didn't have a free day on the beach. We had a very long bus ride and then it was Akko!

Akko: The Canaanites originally decided to settle in this area because of the natural harbor on Mediterranean coast and they named their settlement Accho. The Ptolemies later came and renamed it Ptolemais only to be followed by the Crusaders who changed the name to Jean d'Acre. During Roman times it was Palestine's main port and Paul probably stayed there. When we visited Akko we first saw a fun little movie all about Akko. Then we went to the crusader remains and Brother Skinner talked to us a little bit about significant things to keep an eye out for. There were some great crusader arches and we even found a triclinium which is the Boy Scout sign and has a lot of symbolism. We were able to go through a cool underground tunnel, cool in temperature and in level of interest. We went into what is called the Knight's Hall and that is where everybody would line up tables and eat dinner.

Al-Jezzar Citadel: After seeing all the crusader stuff we went to the Al-Jezzar citadel. It was beautiful inside and out. There was a beautiful courtyard with some big Hawaiian looking flowers and lots of trees and it was very peaceful. Inside was a viewing balcony of sorts and you could just see inside the citadel. There was also a door that said Do Not Enter, but it just so happened to be wide open, so of course me and Mason had to check it out (and of course we didn't see the sign, right . . . ). It was a cool curvy staircase, but it just took us to other balconies on the floor above us and we think it is a women's balcony of sorts. One highlight of this citadel was singing outside it. Some of the girls in our group got in a little circle and started singing some songs I've never heard before in a round and I enjoyed just sitting and watching them and listening to their beautiful voices.

Sea Wall: This sounds kind of lame, and it really kind of was. It is just an old wall that is now almost a cliff down to the Mediterranean. It is a nice looking wall, but it's still just a wall. The thing that made this wall turn into something great was a couple little boys. We were sitting at a restaurant looking at the wall and these boys playing near there and all the sudden they start jumping off the wall! K, you've gotta understand this wall is huge, bigger than anything I've ever jumped off for sure. They are just jumping off in their shorts and socks, then they swam to some shallower rocks and would stand on these rocks in the ocean. It was crazy, just crazy enough that I really wanted to jump! We kept watching and then the boys started doing tricks. We saw front flips, back flips and twists. They would swim to this little edge and pull themselves out and then walk up this really tiny and really steep staircase up to the top and do it all again. After taking pictures and videos of those insane boys we walked back to the buses and on the way passed a lighthouse and some neat shops.

Where's Tyler & Rachel Lee?: When we got on the bus we did a head count and realized there were two people who had not gotten on the bus with the rest of us. Tyler is usually our head counter and he was nowhere to be found. Rachel Lee was also gone. Brother Huff stood at the front of the bus and told us they were missing and said there were two things we needed to do. First we said a prayer asking our Heavenly Father to help us find those missing and asked Him to keep them safe. Next Brother Huff said he needed some of the boys to volunteer. Every single boy on the bus stood up. They all went up and talked to Brother Huff and then we saw them all get off the bus and start running in different directions. It was super cute to see all the boys work together and be literally running to find those in need of help. We were all ooing and awing over how nice our boys were when Cat Tag stands up at the front. I loved it, she went on about how we weren't just going to be the women who sit at home and do nothing while their men fight. So we all pulled out our cameras to see if we could find Rachel or Tyler in any of our pictures we'd taken that day. I didn't find them in mine, but some other people claimed to. Rachel Lee had missed a couple Galilee field trips because of being sick and Brother Huff decided to call Sister Huff who was back at Ein Gev to see if she had seen Rachel Lee. Sister Huff said she hadn't seen Rachel, but that she had seen Tyler. I guess that he had missed the bus that morning and we had forgotten to do a head count when we'd left. Rachel Lee had stayed home sick, so everybody was safe and sound. When our boys came back we made a tunnel through the bus and cheered and stuff and it was just plain good. They were a little disappointed when they found out that the people had not really been located in Akko, and we had just found them back at the kibbutz. I am thankful for the boys being so willing to run around looking for those who had gone missing and it reminds me of our Savior leaving the 99 sheep to go find the one lost sheep. The relationships I have created here are so dear to me and I know that if any of my friends were missing I too would leave the 99 to find the one.

Beth Shearim: When we were sure we knew where everyone in our group was at we headed for Beth Shearim. We ate our lovely kibbutz sack lunches on the bus and tried to cool of our overheated bodies. When we got there we saw a really funny sign that said "good luck in the resurrection" and for some reason we all found that absolutely hilarious. Stink, I'm going to be like an RM when I get back with a weird sense of humor and everything. Really though, half our jokes have to do with stuff from the bible or from ancient sites we got to, ahh! Ok, so Beth Shearim is basically a bunch of tombs where Rabbis were buried during the Jewish revolts and you could go inside and look around and it was just fun exploring. Rachel and I made a bunch of silly videos in the caves and I think she made up half of the stuff that she said, but it sure made it hilarious. Ah, I wonder if I'll ever actually watch all these crazy videos. We met up with Chadwick a little later and he told me all about the "Emperor's New Groove" place where you could climb up the wall back to back like Kuzco and Kronk in the movie, so of course we decided to give it a try. Can I just say that Kuzco and Kronk are really buff and really talented because we couldn't even get both of us up at once, let alone take a step. It was sure fun trying and we were having so much fun we lost track of time and ran ran ran back to the bus and that was the end of our field trips for the day.

Last Sunset: When we got back we had free time until dinner so I ran and got in my swimsuit and swam it up. I knew we were leaving the next morning and was just so sad knowing this was the last time I would probably ever swim in the Sea of Galilee. I love Jerusalem, but Galilee is something else. I would live there in a heartbeat, it's just so peaceful and beautiful and probably just learning so much and seeing so much there made it even more dear to me. After dinner I just walked along the beach, got a couple pictures and watched the sunset. My favorite time of day is when the sun is either setting or rising and everything just looks golden and glorious. When it started getting dark we had a bonfire on the beach and sang some hymns and then had a little testimony meeting. I bore a short and simple testimony of my Father in Heaven and His son, even Jesus Christ. I testified that our trials do make us stronger and I can honestly say I am thankful for my trials. I was touched when later Kristin stood up and bore her testimony and thanked me for testifying of trials and shared that she would like to someday be able to be grateful for her hard experiences. All and all it was just a moving night, being able to sit in a circle with our entire group and just reflect on the things we've learned was inspiring. We've had the unique opportunity to go and see so many things, but on top of that we have experts on these places to teach us about all the important things that happened there. We not only get to visit these places, but we live in Jerusalem and experience the culture and come to love the people. Those are two things that I am really going to miss when we finally do go home. When the testimony meeting was over I laid on the beach in my clothes in the sand and just looked up at the stars. The spirit was present and everything just felt so right and I could have stayed there forever. The heavens are such an incredible thing and I think they help us better understand the nature and divine power of our Heavenly Father and of our brother, Jesus Christ. Our Savior created worlds without number under the direction of His Father and we too are one of God's marvelous creations. After lying and thinking and reflecting for a while Trish and Rachel came and sat by me and we chatted for a while and walked on the beach together. Then we walked up the hill and went our separate ways, a somewhat sad yet perfect ending to a great last day on the Sea of Galilee.

Tuesday July 21st

2009-08-03T21:37:00.001-07:00

Field Trip to Upper Galilee . . .

Hazor: First thing this morning we went to another Tel! Hazor used to be a Canaanite kingdom and was one of Solomon's "chariot cities". It had at least two temples, one of the broad room type and the other a standing stones type. Archaeologist hope to find a Canaanite royal archive because of the size of the tel, and when we were there they had a big dig going on, so hopefully they'll find one. Ahab refortified it before the Assyrians destroyed it under Tiglath-Pileser III. These fortifications including a water system and new walls and stuff like that. This is the tel that the historical novel The Source
by James A. Michener is based on. When we got there we were told everything we needed to know about the place and then we had free time to wander around and look at it all. I made this little comment that Russell thought was hilarious and he had me say it again and again, pretty much I told the same thing to everyone we came in contact with. He thought it was hilarious. I was looking at the back of the brochure for Hazor and it suggested other good tels to visit, but we had already been to both tels it suggested to visit. I turned to Russ and said, you know it's bad when you go to one tel and it suggests two others to visit and you've already been to both. He loved it . After that we went exploring and Trisha, Chadwick, Russ and I decided to go the opposite way as everybody else to avoid the traffic. We found the storage rooms and the wall, and the water system. I love walking down into water systems because it is always so hot here and when you walk down it is nice and cool. I made a movie with my great joke and talking about the water system since we sure do see a lot of those. Then we went and watched where the current dig is taking place and that was totally neat. It's fun to realize that if I have the opportunity to come back I will have a ton of new stuff to see because the archaeological work here never ends, and they're always finding new stuff. We got to see a few things even the fall semester didn't get to see. After that it was back on buses.

Caesarea Philippi/Panias/Banias: We hopped off the buses and found a little place in the shade where we could sing and talk. Brother Huff explained that this was the place where the Greeks worshiped the Greek god Pan, and so it was called Panias. That was arabized to Banias, and then the tetrarch Herod Philip changed the name to Caesarea Philippi to pay tribute to himself and to Caesar. This is one of the water sources that leads into the Sea of Galilee. The cool part is this water comes from rain run-off, but not quite the typical way. The rain soaks through the rock, not through the cracks in the rock, but actually through the rock. It soaks down until it gets to a different kind of rock that won't let water through and then it just goes out the side of the mountain! Yeah, and later a temple was built by the side of the mountain and so this fulfilled the prophecy that said water would flow from the temple. Herod the Great built the temple after Augustus Caesar gave him the district of Panias. It was Herod's son who made this district his capital and so renamed the place after himself. This all sits at the foot of Mt. Hermon, a beautiful and green area. It was fun to see the temple ruins, although very little remains of what once was. This is where Christ asked his apostles "Whom say ye that I am" and Simon Peter answered, saying "Thou art the Christ". This is one of the simplest, but most amazing testimonies to me. I love Peter and I am thankful for his testimony of Christ. In response to Peter's testimony Christ tells him "upon this rock I will build my church" and this is really symbolic because upon the rock the temple was built and the living water, or the true gospel flowed from the temple there. Brother Huff invited some missionaries to share their testimonies and it was great to hear these wonderful RM's testimonies after hearing Peter's. Then Brother Huff explained how to get up to where the water used to come out, and then he paused midway and said, I know this might be awkward, but Camille would you mind sharing your thoughts – I looked over at Camille and saw tears streaming down her face. She thanked Brother Huff for listening to the spirit and said that she had really wanted to share what was in her heart. I am thankful that I have a teacher who listened to the spirit and gave Camille an opportunity to bear her sweet testimony and as soon as she started speaking the spirit came and I know that what she testified of is true. Jesus is the Christ. After Camille's testimony we sang some hymns and I distinctly remember people not only stopping to listen, but taking a seat to hear us sing praise to our Savior. These tourists probably didn't even understand English, but they could feel the spirit and they knew it was good. After singing we walked along this fun little path surrounded by water to get up to the temple ruins and then it was on to the next site.

Dan: Ok, so I love Israel, but it can be kind of dry and deserty looking. Not Dan though, this place was green and fresh and I loved it! I would totally live in this area of Israel if I was living here, you can actually have grass and plants around your house and a yard. There is a nature reserve in part of the place now, and that is where we visited. So the tribe of Dan was assigned the Valley of Laish, after not being able to conquer the people in the Valley of Shiloh, and Laish later became known as Dan. A common way to describe the borders of Israel in the ancient day was from Dan to Beer Sheba and Dan was the northern border. We saw yet another water source here that leads into the Jordan River and then into the Sea of Galilee. We walked along a trail by the water and in some places had to walk on rocks to make it over the water flowing over the trail. In one place we stopped and took a seat and learned some neat words used to describe directions. The East is also known as the orient, or in front of, whereas the West is occident, or behind. South is known as the right hand because that is the covenant hand, and north is the left hand which is apostasy. Then we kept walking and came to the Winnie the Pooh tree, which is filled with holes and I guess that's why they call the Winnie the Pooh tree. It was fun because you could climb inside at the bottom and then get out at the top – kind of like the fake tree in the mall playground, but it was a real tree! We also saw a really huge and ancient idolatrous altar, well what's left of it, that was probably built by Jeroboam. We also some Barracks from when Israel fought Lebanon and we got to walk through. Then at one place we could see the Lebanon border and unfortunately while there Trisha dropped her camera. I felt horrible for her! Other things we saw were a wall that would have been similar to the one at the time of Samuel the Lamanite, and an Israelite wall that was probably there when Abraham came to get his nephew Lot who had been taken to Dan. Close to those sites was an ancient building from some time in the bible that was pretty intact and it was cool to see what a whole building would have looked like. After that it was time to go to the next site.

Banias Waterfall: We hiked down a little bit and then came to a huge waterfall! Its part of Caesarea Philippi and it was great, it was nice and cool down by the waterfall too. We basically just walked down, took some pictures, and walked back up. People like to take what we call "just in case" photographs. You take them in case you end up marrying the person, because then you have really exotically cool engagement pictures. Russell kind of started them and I think he's gotten a just in case shot with every single girl here – just in case. So of course while we were at this waterfall everybody was having a hay day taking just in case shots, I've avoided them for the most part, but I did get one with Russ at one site. Ha ha, you gotta love the JC students and their craziness.

Fortress of Nimrod: I was really excited to come to this site because ever since I can remember my Mom has called me and my brother's nimrods and this was Nimrod's fortress. It used to be a crusader fortress at the foot of Mt. Hermon (right above Banias) and was later rebuilt by Muslims. So Nimrod is actually the mighty hunter mentioned in Genesis 10:8-9, now I actually know what kind of name my mom is calling me! We explored the outside and inside of the fortress. Kristi, Brother Huff's 17-year-old daughter found bats in one of the rooms. So of course we all followed her back to where they were, creeped down in the dark and then turned the flashlight on and saw all these bats clinging to the ceiling. None of them flew away or flew at us luckily and it was cool to see them there. That was probably the highlight of the adventure. Actually, at the very end right before we headed down the mountain we found this little kiosk with a button. So we pushed it and it played this beautiful music and then told us all about the area surrounding the fortress. It was very relaxing and that could have been the highlight.

Syrian Border: Our final stop of the day was just at a lookout point where we could see the Syrian border. Brother Brown just talked to us about the station sitting underground on the Israeli side and said there was one just like it on the Syrian side. Things are pretty intense between the two countries. We were told that every time a plane leaves the ground in Syria Israel immediately sends a plane out so they always have the same number of planes in the sky. This is a defense mechanism so neither country can get control of the air if there were a surprise attack or something. So from our view all we could really see was some fields and a part of a building, oh and an Israeli flag, but Brother Brown promised there were buildings underground and planes leave from close to around here.

Cheer Practice: When we got home all I wanted to do was go jump in the water for an hour before dinner, but we had cheer practice. I was dying that I was in Galilee and couldn't swim because I had cheer practice. We finished putting together our little routine and it took us all the way up until dinner, and actually a little in to dinner to. Then I ate really quickly and then helped Erin learn the dance because she hadn't been there the night before. We both got it down though.

Firebon: After dinner everybody gathered around the fire for our Bonfire! The people at Ein Gev call them firebons because they don't quite get what a bonfire is and yeah, they just call it the wrong name. We went first and everybody thought it was hilarious. It was super cheesy and silly, but it did include a basket toss and two halves and it was a lot of fun. I was amazed by how many great acts there were. We had people do a skit with impersonations of the people here, and then of course there was a "Manly Skit". This was called 4 months and 60 girls later and was all about how the boys have changed since coming here. One guy put his feet behind his head and the Huff girls sang a cute ABC song. It was a lot of fun and we were all just laughing the entire time. All throughout we played this game called . . . and that's the rest of the story. So before the bonfire we had all written a little two liners down on a piece of paper and then they were all passed out at the bonfire. In between acts people would read their papers and then we would try and guess whose paper it was, and then they would tell us the rest of the story. It was a great night and it ended in a dance party. We only danced to 4 songs though because Brother Brown was worried we were being too loud and would wake up people around us. It was funny though because there were all these people who stopped to watch us and were dancing above us. We of course had to play Viva La Vida with its Jerusalem bells a-ringing line and that has kind of become our theme song of the trip I guess you could say. During the dance party I ran back to my apartment to grab something and ran by a family out eating dinner. As I ran past the dad sneezed at me and made me jump and they all cracked up. So when I was running back I decided it would be funny to sneeze at them and they loved it! They started cracking up all over and invited me over to talk and were asking me all about where we were from and what we were doing in Galilee and it was fun talking to them. After that Rach, Trish and I were going to go night swimming, but we were all kind of pooped and decided to wait. Then I went nighty-night!

Monday July 20th

2009-07-25T07:27:00.003-07:00

I woke up bright and early, 5:00 am! It was actually my very favorite morning in Galilee. I went down to the beach and just walked around in the water, and then I picked up a bunch of sea shells for my cousins. Then I just sat on the beach and read in Mark and just thoroughly enjoyed myself. I love Galilee in the morning when you are all alone on the beach and it's not too hot and you can see the sky slowly lightening. After a while a family came out and started throwing in their nets and I couldn't help thinking it was in this very same sea that the apostles Peter and Andrew fished. It was here that Christ told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they caught so many fish their nets almost broke. It was in this sea that Christ told Peter to catch a fish and open and look for a shekel so could pay taxes. It was here that the Savior and Peter walked on the water. I am so thankful to be here, on the Sea of Galilee where Christ performed so many miracles, it is a place where the spirit resides. Today we had classes under the pavilion for the first half, but it is getting hotter and hotter every day here. After about 30 minutes out there I was ready to go inside. It is really hard to focus and pay attention when you are hot and sweating and have so many distractions. After class I wanted to go jump in the water of course, but since I hadn't felt too well the night before I thought it would be smarter to stay out of the heat for the most part. So I caught up on journaling! All day I just wrote and wrote and it was great to get caught up and be in the nice, cool apartment. I didn't want to miss out on the water all day though, so before dinner I went and jumped in and played for a while. Then it was a quick shower, and dinner and then that night I had cheer practice! Yep, that's right. It was right after dinner and there are 10 girls on my bus who are ex-cheerleaders. We have a class "talent" bonfire thing tomorrow night and we decided it would be funny to do a little cheer routine. We have a dance and a cheer and we are even going to put up some stunts. The practice after dinner was to work out a couple stunts, Sydney and I are the two girls flying. Then I had FHE and we just shared what we have been thinking about, or what we have learned in Galilee. Then I talked to Rachel on the beach for a while and we got caught up on each others' lives, we never really see each other except for at meals because of the segregated buses. After talking for a while it was time for cheer practice again! This time we learned the cheer and the dance and I actually was a little excited, I think this is going to be hilarious, and it is kind of fun. We learned the cheer and dance in under an hour and I was sweating up a storm and wow, I am just not used to that kind of stuff anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but we practiced past my bedtime and so after that I called it a night.

Sunday July 19th

2009-07-25T07:27:00.001-07:00

Field Trip in the Jezreel Valley –

Beth Shean/Scythopolis: First stop was Beth Shean which was a very important "crossroads" city in ancient times. Beth Shean means house of safety and this is what is was called in bible times. Joshua could never conquer it but the place was under Israelite rule during the time of King David. It was in this city that Saul and Jonathan's heads and bodies were displayed by the Philistines on the Astarte temple. Later Ptolomies renamed the city Scythopolis after the Scythian mercenaries they built below the tel. Then during the Roman period it was this lower city that became politically important and it was actually the capitol of the Decapolis. It contains facilities typical of a Roman metropolis including a theater, amphitheater, odeon, bathhouse, colonnaded cardo, Roman basilica (townhall), temple, and nymphaeum (fountain). During the byzantine era a synagogue, monastery and basilica church were added. During our visit to Beth Shean we first stopped in a nice shaded pavilion that overlooked the city while Brother Brown told us all about it. Our teachers are great because they always try and find good shade when we have to listen to them talk for a while. Next stop was the amphitheater and on the way we walked through a vomitorium. Yep, this sounds gross but really it is just the portal thing you walk through to get to the places you sit. Like the portals at the BYU stadium, back in Roman times they were vomitoriums – gross. We had some free time and I chose to go up on the hill outside the city. From this hill/mountain there was a great view of the Jezreel Valley and we also saw the Egyptian Governor's home. I have no clue why you would want to live at the top of the hill, but I guess he had servants to carry him up and down the hill so he probably didn't mind much. The best part about climbing up the hill was then you could see pretty much the whole city at once. Well actually you could only see 12% of the city, because the other 88% hasn't been excavated yet and probably never will be. It was a hot and humid day and I was sweating bullets! I'm getting used to that here and I don't know if I'd call that a good thing. Some people in our group spent all their free time looking for ancient artifacts and Russell and Mariah found Roman glass and then Rachelle found a Roman coin and Brent found a widow's mite. I decided I don't really have the patience for that kind of thing, they just spent the whole time looking at the ground and digging through dirt. Beth Shean was neat but the thing I remember most is the intense heat and humidity.

Beth Alpha Synagogue: This stop was wonderful because it involved going in to a nice air conditioned room and watching another great movie! Seriously, we get some great movies here, I wish I could take them all home so my family would have the opportunity to enjoy them as much as I have. This one was a drama about the conflicts that arise when trying to decide who to hire to do a mosaic floor in a synagogue, and in trying to decide what should be included in the piece of art. The mosaic is one of the best preserved byzantine-era mosaics and it has both Hellenistic and Christian influences which makes it stand out from every other byzantine era mosaic floor. The mosaic has the Zodiac in the middle with the Greek sun god Helios in the middle. At the bottom is a depiction of Abraham and Isaac and of course the bull caught in the tree and it's pretty obvious what that is supposed to represent.

Nain: After the synagogue we hit up good old Nain. In this city there was a widow and this is the miracle where her son dies and Christ raises him from the dead. There is now a Byzantine church there and when we pulled up a cute little lady came with her skeleton key and opened up the church so we could go in. It was simple yet beautiful and it had great acoustics. Mary Lou took a minute to teach us about the miracles that had taken place in this city and then we sang a couple hymns.

Mount Tabor: This was our last stop and the most significant thing that happened here is the Transfiguration! It is not for sure that this is the mountain this happened on, but Christians have long believed this is the site. The other really neat thing that happened here is that Deborah and her general Barak collected troops of northern Israelite tribes. Deborah urged them to go down the mountain and fight and the Lord discomfited Sisera (the Canaanite leader) and he and all his chariots were swept away by the river. Many Christians believe this is the site of the Transfiguration and so the Byzantines built three churches on Mt. Tabor to represent the three tabernacles for Moses, Elijah and Christ. Later a Benedictine community built a monastery and the present basilica was constructed by the Franciscans who still maintain it to this day. We got to the base of the mountain and then waited and waited to load into small buses that fit 8-10 people. While we were waiting Andy and I were looking at the stuff for sale and found a mini mini bible. Then Andy just opens it up to James 1:5 and shares a spiritual thought with me and it was absolutely hilarious! Don't worry, I got it on video. That little key chain bible was so funny, I totally would have gotten it if A: I had money and B: they had one not broken in English. When I finally got into a van/bus thing the drive up was very curvy, like switchbacks hiking the Y, but worse. It was actually a fun drive and included a game of corners. I was sitting next to Alex, and I look like an ant compared to him, so after one corner our game was over. When we got up on top of the mountain we found a little area with benches where we could talk. We had already learned about the Transfiguration in class, so we just read the story in the scriptures and talked about it a little bit. I thought it was cool that not only were three living witnesses there, but three heavenly witnesses. Peter, James and John were there as well as Moses, Elias, and John the Baptist. It was John the Baptist who gave the keys of the Aaronic priesthood to Joseph Smith in Oliver Cowdery on May 15, 1829 so it was important he was at the Transfiguration to see the keys be given to Peter, James and John. The church on the mountain is beautiful and very well done but my favorite place was the lookout on the roof. There was a part where you could walk on the roof of a building next to the church and see the valley below and it was very pretty. I could imagine Christ and all the other people on the mount with him standing there and looking out over everything below them and then talking about some important gospel concepts. I am thankful the priesthood was given to three apostles living on the earth at that time and I am thankful that same priesthood power has been restored in this dispensation. I know the priesthood is a power given by God and that when men are worthy they can exercise this power. I am thankful for my dad and that he has always been worthy to give me blessings in time of need, he is a great example to me of the kind of spiritual giant I want to marry. Thank you Dad! Sure love ya – After getting some pictures up on the mountain we took another crazy bus ride down the mountain and then loaded up in buses and went home.

Ein Gev: We got back a little before dinner, so I got a quick nap in and then ate up. I wasn't feeling so good, I think I outdid myself playing and running around in the sun all day every day. We had class right after dinner but I still just felt not good. I talked to Dr. Skinner and told him the situation and he said just to go lay down and so I picked up my backpack and left before he could change his mind. I tried to call my Mom and Dad to fill them in with my life, and I tried my Nana and Papa but everybody's phones were off, it went straight to their answering machine. My guess is that they are all in Lake Powell or something and that's why they don't have their phones on. After that I went to bed even though it was only 8:00 pm.

Saturday July 18th

2009-07-25T07:26:00.001-07:00

Shalom and Shabbat . . . Sleep in, eat, get ready and leave for Tiberias.

Tiberias Meetinghouse: This is where the only church meetinghouse in Galilee is and it is where the Tiberias branch meets. I was busy on the bus trying to find hymns to sing in church. You see, Brother Huff had asked me to be the chorister, and that meant I got to pick the hymns. It wasn't until this assignment that I realized I was not asked to speak or do anything else in a sacrament meeting my entire freshman year – I'm still in shock I didn't do a thing in a single meeting! So as I realized I hadn't done anything in sacrament since I had spoken in my home ward quite some time ago, I realized how incredibly nervous I was. Here are the hymns I picked with the help of my roommate Monica (thank you Monica):

Opening: Let Us All Press On

Sacrament: He Loved Us So He Sent His Son

Closing: My Redeemer Lives (President Hinckley's version)

When we got to the meeting house Brother Huff had me fill out the Branch President's paper with all the things we had been invited to do in the meeting. It was fun being involved and helped me keep from getting to nervous before the meeting. After that I took a little tour of the meetinghouse. The building is incredible and incredibly gorgeous! There are three balconies and although we weren't allowed to go on the 3^rd floor balcony because it was structurally unsafe, the other two floors gave us a great view. From where you sat during the meeting you could look out over the Sea of Galilee and it was just so beautiful. The building was classy, but not to formal. It had a clean and inviting look to it. I ended up sitting on the side where you unfortunately couldn't see the Sea from, but that's where the piano and the place to lead from were. The good thing is that is also where the air conditioning box was. The meeting was great. President Madsen was the branch president and he was just a very tender and loving man. You could tell he really loved what he was doing and that he really loved his wife. Sister Madsen was a very kind woman and after the sacrament she recited a really cool reading talking about the pioneers and all the great and horrible things they had experienced crossing the plains. It was a good reminder as pioneer day is coming up and I was thankful for her preparation. Then Stephanie Lacey spoke about her Galilee experience. We got to have a musical number from Mariah and Andy again and of course they sounded wonderful. They were followed by Megan sharing her Galilee experience and she talked about Peter's faith on the Sea of Galilee. We got to have another musical number and this was Andy, Stephen, Isaac and Nathan singing Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy. It is a Men's chorus hymn and they sang it absolutely beautifully. Eric was the concluding speaker and he talked about Christ, "and then some". He told us all about this phrase and how Christ never just did what was asked, he always did that "and then some". I think this might be my new theme for life, just to go the little extra mile and always do what is required of me not only by the others, but by the Lord "and then some". I really liked this thought. President Madsen closed the meeting with his testimony of faith in Jesus Christ. It was a great meeting with a wonderful spirit present. I am very grateful to all the people who contributed to the meeting and made it so great. I was actually very thankful to be able to be a part of that meeting and lead the music, and it really wasn't too hard or scary. Sister Newell taught me right in primary, and let's be honest, not many people really watch the chorister anyway. Well, that's what I thought anyway, until after the meeting people kept telling me good job. It was funny, Andy came up to me and said, "Steph, good job leading. I noticed in the middle you had a smile that was just very. . . I don't know . . . very handsome". That is the first time I have been told I have a handsome smile and I appreciated the compliment, good old Andy.

Yardenit: After church we made a stop at the Jordan River, this time at a place called Yardenit. This is the place where everybody gets baptized in the Jordan River and nobody was getting baptized this day, but it was still crazy busy. On the way in there was this wall with Mark 1:9-11 in a ton of different languages. We stopped at one part and Brother Huff had Camille read the French version, Eric read the Spanish, and I teased him that I could speak English, so I ended up reading the English verses. Then we walked through this visitor's center place to the baptism sites. So imagine a line at Disneyland, the way it wraps around, and then imagine those lines in a foot deep of water and that is Yardenit. Yep, this is how it works. You get in line, wait until your turn and then get baptized. It was funny to see kids swimming in the baptism areas since no baptisms were happening. On a wall inside there was the same verses from Mark in more languages and my personal favorite was Pigeon. They had a tiled Pigeon version that made me laugh, I know my dad will love it! After seeing the baptism sites we took some pictures, sang baptism hymns and headed back to Ein Gev.

Since it was the Sabbath I decided against swimming and took a short little nap and then spent the rest of the day journaling and getting caught up, and still I was days behind. My day sped by and then it was dinner time. After dinner was a fireside.

Galilee Fireside: I was expecting a fire at this fireside, but it was not so. We were in a semi-circle looking out over the Sea of Galilee as the sun set, and that was wonderful. Before the meeting began I was talking to Rach. Well, I was wearing a wrap around skirt, and a few moments later someone told me to grab my skirt and it was then that I realized the top layer of my skirt had been flying up in the wind, umm- Rachel Curtis and Michael spoke about how we can take the lessons we learn here and use them as a teaching tool when we go home. Rachel had asked me to read a quote and when I stood up to read it I was a little worried about my skirt! Her talk was great, she was very prepared with quotes and scripture and audience participation. It was funny to see her and Michael's teaching styles right next to each other. Rachel's was structured and organized, whereas Michael had a couple notes written down in a little notebook and went from there. Both gave great talks and I learned a lot about how beneficial it is for me and those I am teaching to share my experiences here. They also shared ways to share these experiences with others. After Mike Sister Madsen introduced herself and her husband and shared a miracle she experienced while serving in Tiberias. I guess it has been her goal to record the stories of all the members in her branch and she has a high-tech voice recorder. She was downloading 42 files and was able to download 20 but the other 22 seemed to be lost. These were 22 members she had interviewed and their interviews were lost. The phone support guy said there was no way to recover them but the next day she had to send the 20 files to the support guy and amazingly all 42 files sent even though they seemed to be gone. The phone support guy then told Sister Madsen that he was an RM and had worked with the voice recorder stuff for a while and she had truly experienced a miracle. I was grateful that she was willing to share this experience with us and for the sweet spirit she brought to the meeting. Brother Madsen then stood up and shared the story of a mother with a wayward son. She prayed to know what to do for her son and felt she just needed to tell him she loved him. So every night after he went to bed she would sneak in and tell him how much she loved him. Years later he had grown out of his rough phase and a neighbor came to this mother asking for advice about what to do with a wayward daughter. This mother said just to be patient and the daughter would grow out of it, her son had. Her son then interrupted and said, mom, it wasn't that I grew out of it, it's that every night you came in and told me how much you loved me and that is why I came back. Brother Madsen then testified of the power of love. I too have a testimony of love and how it can help and heal others and I am so thankful for my testimony of love. I remember after Brady died it was those who simply loved us that could bring us the most comfort and I know that when I truly love those around me I am the happiest.

Sneeching: After the fireside we had our group prayer and of course the one time I wasn't prepared with a thought I got sneeched on. Jonah sneeched on me, the sneaky guy. The funny part is when I sat by him on the bus he was like, oh man, I thought I had my own seat. Jonah got a couple facts wrong, but managed to make my face turn red enough. Since I got sneeched on that meant I also got to share a spiritual thought. I shared the hymn Each Life that Touches Ours For Good. I read the 1^st, 2^nd and 4^th verse and explained that I believe we each are here for a reason and have a special role and purpose in each others' lives. I testified that Heavenly Father's plan is perfect and that he has a unique and specific plan for each of us.

Eric & Michael: I had previously asked Eric if it would be appropriate to receive another priesthood blessing and he said it would be, so after the group stuff Eric and Michael and I went down to the beach and pulled up a chair. Eric gave me a blessing not only blessing me with healing, but also with patience and understanding of the will of my Heavenly Father. He blessed me that I would have the faith to be healed and I really appreciated this since I have been thinking a lot about faith and what my faith can do. Before coming to Galilee I always knew that people had the faith to move mountains, but being here I realized that normal people can have that kind of faith. I know I'm nowhere close to being able to move mountains or walk on water, but I realize that kind of faith is attainable and in fact is what I should be striving for. One story I heard about an apostle made me believe this kind of faith is possible. In this story a man was staying at the home of President Benson and went upstairs to go to bed for the night. Right next to the room he was staying in was President Benson's room and as he walked by the President's door was slightly open and he heard this strange sound and saw President Benson rolling around on the floor. He walked in somewhat concerned but then realized President Benson was hysterically laughing. When this man asked what was so funny President Benson replied that Heavenly Father had just told him a really funny joke! I really want to continue to strengthen my relationship with my Savior and with my Heavenly Father until I can pray and exchange jokes with Heavenly Father, I just think that story is so amazing because it is a real person with a seemingly unreal relationship with the Father. I have become very aware this week of my relationship with Christ and my Heavenly Father, and I have also become very aware of where my relationship with him can be and I want to continue to strengthen it until it gets to that point and then exceeds that point. Ah, I just love it here!

After getting a blessing I went and talked to Rach for a little bit then it was late and time for bed.

Friday July 17th

2009-07-25T07:25:00.003-07:00

Class in the morning and free day all afternoon. Today we set up class under a pavilion on the beach so we could get out of the sun and a little further from the water and it was a great set up. Second half of class was still inside, and afterwards I went swimming until lunch.

The Hike: After lunch we all got on a bus and went on a hike with Eric Maltzman, the famous Ein Gev hike leader. We drove to a part of the Golan Heights and then started on our hike. We hiked first to black waterfall, which was insy winsy and had a pool too dirty and too shallow to swim in. He promised there was a place later that we'd be able to swim in. The next waterfall was the white waterfall and he was right, it was totally swimmable! I hopped right in and it was cold! The water was somewhat mossy and dirty feeling, but it was still great. For a while we just swam around but then people started to be creative with their time. The dunking began. I avoided a great number of dunks, but still got dunked plenty. Some brave souls started doing flips off one of the side walls, but I definitely wasn't one of them. I watched from a safe distance. Brad found some bamboo and started trying to make a snorkel of sorts. I instantly joined and attempted to make my own snorkel. I ended up cutting up my hands, which really added to the blisters I had gotten from rowing the day before. My first snorkel was too short to be much good and my second one worked great until I accidentally bit into and put a big crack in the side – oops. It was a lot of fun to make and kept me busy. When we were all done swimming we hiked up and up. The hike there had been all downhill, but I didn't even realize that meant the hike out would be uphill. It wasn't too uphill though, and there was a great view the whole way. It was interesting to lookout and see all yellow, and then one little line of green following where the stream ran. I spent the majority of both hikes listening to Mason and Chadwick's crazy stories, those boys are trouble. It was a fun hike! After that it was back to Ein Gev to quickly shower before it was time to leave again.

Tiberias: This night it was my classes turn to go to Tiberias. We went to a fish restaurant where they serve you the fish with the skin still on and the fins still there and the eyes and everything! Disgusting, I know! I would never order a fish in a million years, and Kristin wasn't too fond of the idea either, so she ordered Pasta, I ordered Pizza, and we split. It worked out beautifully. The fish smell was almost overwhelming, but luckily there was pita and strong smelling pita dips to block it out somewhat. After eating dinner we all took pictures out by the sunset and then headed to Tiberias. Since it was Shabbat most of the shops were closed, but McDonalds and a couple street shops and ice cream places were open. I really like Tiberias, it reminds me a little bit of Victoria. I imagine if it wasn't Shabbat there would be street performers and more street shops. You could walk along the harbor and just see the boats and it was just a fun atmosphere, but once again, most everything was closed. I walked around with Trisha and we started off the night stalking other people in our group. That sounds funny, but we didn't really want ice cream and there wasn't much to see or do, so we just followed the other people in our group and watched what they were doing. Then Russell joined us and we ended up asking him all about his love life, which is non-existent since we are currently in Israel and he'll be moving to Wisconsin when we get home. Despite those obstacles we tried to be creative and come up with a love life for h anyway. Then it was time to load up and head home.

Home: Interesting how often my concept of home changes here. When we got back I knew I could stay up a little later since it was church in the morning and we didn't have to leave until 9:30 am. I talked with Rachel and Kristin on the beach for a while and then me and Rach finished up our movie in her apartment. Then it was bed time.

Thursday July 16th

2009-07-25T07:25:00.001-07:00

Another field trip . . . Today we were going to Gamla and Qazrin, luckily it was only a half-day because I was pooped before the day even began.

Gamla: Gamla is in the Golan Heights and was a focal point during the First Revolt against Rome. It is a mini mountain that rises steeply between two wadis. This mini mountain resembles a camel's hump, and the word camel comes from the Hebrew/Arabic word gamal – thus we get Gamla. When we got to Gamla we went to a lookout point where we could see the camel hump mini mountain. There Brother Brown explained why this site would be so difficult to attack. I guess during the First Revolt against Rome Gamla sided with the Zealots and was a very important site for getting supplies to the Galilee area. Agrippa besieged Gamla for 7 months but couldn't take it, but then Vespasian conquered Gamla in 67 AD after breaching the wall in three places. About 4,000 Jews were killed by Roman soldiers, and another 5,000 jumped from the steep mountain to their death. There is still part of the synagogue, a tower, and a mikva left behind. While at the lookout we saw some vultures flying around and Brother Huff told us that there is a giant cage where they keep vultures that are injured or were raised elsewhere and that the Golan Heights now is a safe place for vultures so they won't go extinct in Israel. We saw the cage from a distance but unfortunately weren't allowed to visit it. After getting briefed on the area we got to go hiking. Once again I was grateful for an overcast day because it was hot without the sun beating down on our backs. The Galilee area is interesting because it doesn't feel that hot temperature wise, but it is so humid you are just dripping with sweat. You feel disgusting the entire time! I was definitely feeling the humidity while we hiked.

Hilltop and Ruins: We first went down the mountain to the base of Gamla, and then we hiked up the side of this mini mountain. On the way we saw where part of the wall had been breached and a fake battering ram showing where Rome attacked. I had been skeptical when they said 5,000 had died by jumping off the side, but when I got to the top and saw how steep it was on each side then the idea made total sense. I am not afraid of heights in the least bit, but I must admit was kind of scary standing on top of large rocks at the top and knowing if you weren't careful with your footing you had rocks on each side to fall down on. It probably didn't help that I was wearing my homeless shoes. I have one pair of sandals that have been dubbed my homeless shoes because I wear them pretty much every day and they are so worn out they look like they belong to a homeless person. One had olive oil spilled all over it (yes from the olive bottle breaking in the old city that one day) and both are frayed and super dirty. Other people started calling them my homeless shoes, and then I heard the name and now it's just kind of stuck. These homeless shoes definitely don't have top quality traction either, in fact they have zero traction, so that didn't help much when I was attempting to climb up slippery huge rocks on the side of this dangerous mountain. I was plenty safe though of course. So Gamla is a pretty hidden mini mountain because it is surrounded by other larger mountains, but it is perhaps this hill that is described in the scripture that says a city on a hill cannot be hid. From Capernaum there was no possible way to see Gamla unless there was a light on top, and then it was easy to see exactly where Gamla was located. Brother Huff told us this and I think it brings a whole new meaning to the scripture for me. After admiring the view for a while we hiked down another path and went to what is left of the tower, and then we saw the synagogue with a mikva right outside. This synagogue is the kind where the people sit on the sides and all look towards the center and the mikva is probably there because you had to cleanse yourself before entering the synagogue. After seeing those ruins we headed towards the waterfall!

Waterfall: As we hiked along Brother Huff told us about his major and college and previous jobs and we found out he used to be a spy and used his Russian in his spy work! Totally cool, I know. We asked for more stories and he promised he would supply that later. Then I ended up talking to Brent the rest of the hike and apparently I have a very soothing and distressing voice. I appreciated the compliment, but I thought it was pretty funny since I don't think I have one at all. After he told me that he kept asking me to tell him stories just so my voice could soothe him – silly boy. The hike was beautiful with high yellow somethings growing on both sides of us, a blue sky and trees here and there. At one point we came to a bunch of dolmens, which are basically just rock tables. They are made out of three pieces of basalt slabs and were probably erected as tombs about 2100 BC. They were pretty cool, I was surprised they were still standing, but then again who would want to move huge slabs of rock that have been sitting there for 4,000 years? Beats me . . . the hike ended at the largest waterfall in Israel! Legit though. It might not be the widest, but it is the tallest at 61 meters. We couldn't hike down to where the waterfall met the ground because of time restraints, but Brother Huff said there wasn't much to see anyway. By the time we go to the waterfall we had about 15 minutes to hike back to the bus, and we were going to be late. Brother Huff didn't want to by a hypocrite, so he ran back, but my group walked knowing there was another group quite a bit behind us that would be later than us. Maybe that's the wrong attitude, but we were back over ten minutes before the group so really we weren't holding the bus up.

Qazrin: This place was a short stop. We got off the bus and crowded into a big theater that was set up like an ancient synagogue, so we all sat on the sides. There were two or three TV screens on each wall and at different times during the movie they would show different things. It was kind of fun being able to pick which one you wanted to watch at any given moment, but kind of a headache too since they weren't all showing the same thing. The movie was all about 4 rabbis who visited Qazrin. One died, one left blind, one left a heretic, and the last left in peace. Qazrin is also on the Golan Heights but was very different than Gamla. It flourished as Jewish village from the 4^th to the 8^th century AD when the Talmud was being compiled, so it is known as a Talmudic village. There are two houses that have been restored by archaeologists to demonstrate the features of daily life from this era. One house has construction tools and techniques. The other is a rabbi's house and contains internal and external ovens, storage facilities, agricultural tools, spinning wheels and looms, cooking utensils, a sleeping loft, and terraces. There are also remains of two synagogues and archaeologists partially restored one of them. After the movie our group gathered in the shade under a very old oak and Brother Huff and Brown explained what this site was all about. Near this tree was what is called a bird's eye. It was a rock with a hole in the middle and behind the rock was a piece of transparent plastic. You could see what is left of the synagogue through the bird's eye thing and then the plastic had the rest of the synagogue drawn on so with the two together you got an idea of what the synagogue looked like way back when. We had a little free time to look around and then headed back to Ein Gev. It was just about lunch time, so I took a short nap and then headed to lunch. After lunch a group of us got on the bus for another adventure!

Kayaking down the Jordan River: Yeah! We got bused to a place where we could get kayaks and then go down the Jordan River rapids. We all got off the bus and I was ready to go in my swimsuit. I didn't have shorts or shoes or anything, I was just ready to go. I didn't realize how funny this was until every person I saw commented on the fact that it was just me and my swimsuit. Everybody else had backpacks and shoes and clothes and hats and sunglasses, etc. While, weren't they silly. By the time we were sitting down in our life jackets getting a little bit of instruction they are were wondering why they hadn't left all their stuff on the bus – so there you go! Me and Rach decided to go together and started down the river, ready to brave the ferocious rapids of the Jordan. Now when I say rapids I mean slight bumps. There were less rapids on the Jordan then there are on the Provo River, and that's saying something. Of course that was probably for the best since me and Rach weren't the best kayakers ever. We managed to only run into a tree every other river bend and enjoyed ourselves despite the tree branchage in our faces. There was a big group ahead of us all splashing each other with water, and they were all clogged up and whatnot. We decided we'd push through and get ahead and then surprise attack later. We kind of ran for a bit to get ahead – mistake. We were ahead the whole time and tried to not paddle at all so they would catch up and we could join the fight, but no, they were too slow. We had a great time chit chatting and just floating down, but we missed all the action. At one point we decided to get out and pull our boat onto the beach so we could just swim and have fun with some other kids who had stopped to swim. It was all fun and games until Isaac did a handstand. It was a successful handstand but when he came up Candace said something along the lines of – wait, didn't you have your glasses on – yeah, that did happen. He handstanded his glasses right of his face and to this day they are enjoying rapids of the Jordan River. Poor Isaac. When we got done kayaking we sat at the place where you have to get out and just talked and talked and enjoyed the sun and water while we waited for all the slow pokes to come the rest of the way down. When we were all done we headed back to Ein Gev and got there just in time for dinner.

Unfortunately the life guard was gone which meant we weren't allowed to swim. Master's class went to Tiberias for dinner, but my group just spent the night relaxing on the beach and getting some homework in. It was another great day in Galilee!

Wednesday July 15th

2009-07-25T07:24:00.001-07:00

Free day at the Kibbutz! Hooray! Well, kind of anyway. We had New Testament from 8-11:15 and man is it hard to pay attention for three hours straight when you know you have a big ol' body of water waiting for you to come play. We had the first half of class right out on the water and it was great being able to hear the water while we were talking about the very events that had happened on that sea, but hearing the water did make it a little bit difficult to hear Brother Huff at some points. It was a beautiful overcast day, it would have been miserable to be out there so long if the sun had been out the entire time. The second classroom was in the basement of the place where we eat meals and it was a nice air conditioned room where it was easier to hear, but I'm glad we got to be outside for the first half. So remember how my bag was soaked in olive oil – yep. So now all my papers that I put in my bag come out with oil all over them. At least I know which ones are mine without even writing my name on them though. After class I went straight for the water. I talked with Russell, Raven, Alex and Cat until lunch and it was just so relaxing to be in the water just chit-chatting (or chat-chitting as Trish and Chadwick would say). I ate lunch in ten minutes flat and then was back out in the water this time with Elise body surfing. The waves were surprisingly big, something to do with that cold air coming down from the mountains. We played Marco Polo and did more stunting and I even single-based Eric and Chadwick, but I couldn't hold them up for very long, I'm not sure if it was because of my lack of strength or their lack of balance, ha. Every hour I would say, ok in an hour I'll get out, but then an hour later I would still want to stay. I ended up staying until half hour before dinner. At that point I got out and put a run in and then ate some dinner. After dinner we had ANE – no I'm not kidding. It started at 7:30 and went until 9:30 and once again I was sucking on Jolly Ranchers to stay awake. The room that had been nice and air conditioned in the morning during New Testament was now hot, sticky, and somewhat miserable. During this class my computer decided that it really didn't like me all that much. We were sitting there getting along just great, I was taking a gazillion notes and then out of the blue it blinks off on me. I tried to turn it back on and it just shut back off. I can't believe my computer, we are definitely in a fight now. I talked to James, the computer guru after class and he said it had probably just overheated and just needed a break and then it would be fine. He told me to check the fans for dust. Personally I'm sure my computer was just sick of taking notes, but I am going to take his advice and check on the fan. After class I walked straight to my room, brushed my teeth and jumped into bed. I was so tired I didn't even bother changing. Free day's can be just as exhausting as field trips when you are in the Lake all day long!

Tuesday July 14th

2009-07-25T07:23:00.003-07:00

First full day in Galilee and it included an absolutely superb field trip! I was supposed to get up and run on the beach in the morning, but I slept through my alarm clock – oops. Our field trip today was all about the miracles of Christ. I didn't realize until coming here that between 70 and 80% of Christ's ministry took place in the Galilee area! I am so excited to visit so many sites that my Savior frequented.

Boat Ride on the Sea of Galilee: We started off the morning with a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee and I was in heaven. Ah, I cannot tell you how much I love boats, just everything about them. I could not sit still, I would go to the front and look over, then go to the side then just stand in the middle, go sit down, and repeat . . . thank you Papa for teaching me all about boats, I am proud to say I was explaining to all the boys where the stern, aft and bow were and I had to tell them which side was port and which was starboard. I might add that this boat was a beautiful wooden boat that just happened to have stern thrusters! Yeah, it was pretty legit. So the Sea of Galilee is in the shape of a harp and is 7½ by 12½ miles and about 150 feet deep. The Jordan River runs through it and the surface of this body of water is at 680 feet below sea level. It is also known as Lake of Chinnereth, Lake of Gennesaret and the Sea of Tiberias. At Christ's time there were 9 cities around the lake, but now many of those cities are desolate, consistent with the fact that Christ cursed several of these cities for their unbelief even after the great miracles he wrought in them. The water is clean and green and it was gorgeous going out and when we were in the middle we cut the engines and read the story of Christ walking on the Sea of Galilee. It was not until this reading of the story that I realized how much faith Peter must have had to take that first step. Can you imagine sitting in the middle of a lake during a storm and feeling confident that if you stepped out of the boat onto the water you would not sink- wow! I admire and respect Peter for his faith and hope to someday have that same faith. Then when I got to really thinking about this story I realized that he took a couple steps, he walked on water and then started sinking, but why? It was when he took his focus off the Savior, even just for a moment that he started to sink. We can draw parallels to our life with this. If our focus is on the Lord we can accomplish all that he has in store for us, but if we are distracted or find confidence in our own ability then the Lord drops out of focus and we will not be able to walk on water. When Peter did start to sink he immediately looked back towards the Savior though, saying "Lord, save me". I want to have a relationship with the Lord where first person I look towards to help me out is my Savior. When Peter asked for help Christ immediately reached down to pull him up, he is waiting with an outstretched hand to save us we just need to ask and reach towards the open hand so he can pull us up. I really love this story and it means even more since I've been able to visit the sea it took place on. After talking for some time we started moving again and it was crazy picture time. We started making our way towards land and then stepped of onto Ginosar, a small fertile plain.

Nof Ginosar: Near here is Magdala, the hometown of Mary Magdelene. There is now a modern Israeli Kibbutz Ginnosar and it has something very unique on its premises. In 1986 there was draught and so the Sea of Galilee was much smaller than in previous years. Two men found an ancient boat in the mud and with help from volunteers from the Kibbutz excavated and preserved the boat. The boat has been dated to the 1^st century AD, meaning it is from the time when Christ was on the earth. The Kibbutz has a little visitor's center where you can watch a movie about the boat and then see the boat. It is displayed beautifully, and I was surprised to learn that the way they preserved it was by extracting water and putting oil and wax in its place. This boat was most likely propelled by a sail-bearing mast and two sets of oars. It would have had a crew of about 5 men and could have carried up to 10 or more passengers. While we were looking at the boat Brother Skinner shared with us the significance of a boat like this. He explained that this boat was not only purposeful for fishing and battle, but also for teaching. If you remember in the New Testament there were several instances where the multitude was so large that Christ would stand in a boat slightly out from shore and teach the people. Brother Skinner said he has visited places where Christ could have taught in this setting and has stood in the boat and the acoustics are shockingly fantastic despite the noise from the waves crashing on the shore. It was really neat to be able to see this boat and imagine Christ standing in a similar vessel teaching the multitudes the gospel, how fantastic!

Mount of Beatitudes: We met up with our bus outside the Kibbutz and then our next destination was the Mount of Beatitudes. There is currently an octagonal Italian church at the top of this mountain and it was from a nun at this church that we got permission to talk under what of the pavilions on the mount. This is most likely the very mountain where Christ delivered his Sermon on the Mount which is perhaps the most important text for defining the New Testament. This sermon can be found in Matthew chapter 5-7. "Beatus" means "blessed are" and that is the root from which beatitudes comes from and they are a memorable of Christ's sermon and are in Matthew 5, verses 3-10. There are 8 beatitudes and that is why the Italian church was built as an octagon, to symbolize these 8 beatitudes. We gathered our whole group under a pavilion and then had different students teach us about the beatitudes. Monica taught specifically about the beatitudes and Lydia shared her knowledge of Heavenly Father's love for each and every one of His children. It was of course wonderful to hear the testimonies of my classmates and at the same time learn about the wonderful lessons that were previously taught in this special area.

Tabgha: We next went to two churches in Tabgha, which is in between the cities of Magdala and Capernaum. The first was the Church of the Heptapegon, which means "seven springs". This church commemorates the miracle of the loaves and fishes. It has a little spring thing with seven fish spiting water out of their mouths into a small pond. In the courtyard we sang and then Mariah taught us not only about this miracle, but about Christ's mercy. She shared a scripture in Deuteronomy that I feel perfectly describes Christ's mercy. We truly are so blessed to have such a merciful God who sent his son to earth to not only atone and die for us, but to also to give miracles unto man. The second church we went two is called St. Peter's Primacy and it commemorates Christ's appearance to His apostles, when He shared a meal with them and then told Peter to "feed my sheep". In this basalt church there is a natural rock on which the ancient meal was allegedly spread and it functions as the "mensis Christi" or table of Christ. Inside the church we sang some hymns and then went outside to a circular seating area. Sydney then shared her thoughts and feelings on the talk "Peter, My Brother" and then Chadwick testified of the priesthood. I was able to learn so much about Peter, his ministry, and the special calling and the keys he held as the chief apostle. After these students shared Brother Skinner stood and testified that Peter was given keys directly from the Savior that came from our Father in Heaven. He shared his feelings and impressions of Peter and spoke with the conviction of the spirit. I am still grateful to these three and to Brother Huff for the spirit they were able to bring to our group at that time and I know that my testimony of Peter and the divine priesthood he held is strengthened because of them. After being spiritually uplifted we walked down to the water and saw some huge rock-shaped hearts. We took some pictures and relaxed and even had a skipping rock contest. I definitely didn't win, but luckily I did actually know how to skip a rock.

Capernaum: Peter was born in Bethsaida but Capernaum is where he lived and this city was actually the base of Christ's Galilean ministry. When Christ left Nazareth he went to Capernaum where he stayed at Peter's house and this is where all the people would come to visit him to be healed. They were kind of like Christ's headquarters and became Christianity's first church. When we went there was a large octagonal building that had a big hole in the middle covered by glass. Underneath this glass is what is left of Peter's domus-ecclesia (house-church). After seeing this church our group found some shade and there Bethany taught us about some of the miracles that had taken place in Capernaum, including the daughter of Jarius being raised from dead. Brother Huff then shared even more miracles with us and testified that these miracles were given not only to help those receiving the miracles, but as a testimony of the divinity of Christ. I know that Christ did go to Capernaum and there he performed many miracles out of love. I know that these miracles are included in the New Testament as a testimony of Christ's power on earth and I know he was sent by the Father to complete a special mission on earth and I also know that there are still miracles today and that many times these miracles are provided through another child of God on the earth. We can be somebody's angel and we can provide the miracle somebody desperately needs if we are listening to the spirit and his promptings. After singing several hymns and sharing our thoughts and some great stories we went into the synagogue. Close to Peter's house archaeologists found two synagogues, one built on top of another. The bottom one is made of black stone and is probably from the time of Christ. This synagogue was probably built by the centurion who's servant Christ healed, and if that is the case Christ taught in that basalt synagogue. On top of this synagogue is one of white limestone that consists of two rooms, and at one point had second floor that was probably a gallery for women. Synagogues are built towards Jerusalem so that when people pray in the synagogue they are facing Jerusalem. The original synagogue was built a little bit off and didn't quite face Jerusalem, so when the second was built the angle was slightly changed. Brother Huff related this to the talk President Uchtdorf gave about planes being just one degree off and ending up in a completely different place than planned. I loved this talk and I thought it was significant that the people who built the second synagogue cared about being right on the mark so much that they measured and changed the buildings angle so it would be accurately facing Jerusalem. At this point in the day I was hot and tired and all my water was gone, but I was saved by my new best friend – Jolly Ranchers. My mom sent me some for my birthday and there is nothing better to keep you awake and alert in the hot sun than a little bit of sugar to suck on. Thank you mom and thank you Jolly Ranchers!

Kursi: This was our last stop for the day and although I love what I learned today I was overjoyed to be almost back to Ein Gev where I would be able to swim in the Sea of Galilee and relax for a bit. Our bus pulled to the side of the road and we got out and hiked up a little hill. There were signs all along the edge that said "Caution – Mines!" So of course we all had to get pictures of us being cautious as we stepped over mines and then we even took a picture where all of us had one leg missing (Brother Huff's idea). We were on the edge of a steep mountain and at the bottom was the Sea of Galilee. This is traditionally the site where the Lord casted the devils out of the man and they went into the swine and then ran down a "steep place" into the Sea of Galilee. When we read this miracle in Mark Brother Huff pointed out that Christ took the time to ask the evil spirit what its name was. The spirit answered that their name was Legion because there were many of them. How significant that Christ loved even an evil spirit so much that he took the time to ask the spirit its name, and also to consider what the spirit wanted. It was at the request of the evil spirit that Christ allowed the spirit to leave the man and enter into the swine. Beautiful Savior, Lord of creation! I am constantly amazed at his love and mercy and I was thankful to learn so much about those two characteristics of his nature today.

Finally Swimming: Ah, I got to swim in the Sea of Galilee! When I got home first thing I did was change into my swimsuit and swim swim swim! The water was warm, but not too hot and there were fun waves to play in. Mostly I just jumped in the waves and talk to people, but there definitely was some basket tossing with some of the guys here and then of course chicken fights. I was on Chadwick's shoulders and I think I just about drowned the poor guy! I played in the water until dinner time and then after dinner we had a bonfire. I was expecting a bonfire on the beach, but in a metal fire pit in a grassy area overlooking the sea. Still fantastic if you ask me! Rachel and I had fun attempting two person cartwheels and after almost dying a couple times got pretty stinking good at them! When we were too exhausted to continue we decided to get a laptop and blankets and pillows and watch a movie on the beach! It was a great idea, but a little bit more work and a little more messy than we had supposed. Once we were set up though it was fun to watch a movie with only the stars above us and we could hear the waves on the shore and it was just fun! My battery didn't last the whole movie though, so we decided to finish it up another night and instead stayed up talking with Emily K. and Mandy all about the Galilee love life, it's hilarious, everyone thinks just because they are in Galilee they need to kiss someone – so not true and so not happening for me! After that I went to B-E-D! Boy do they know how to wear you out here!

Tuesday July 14th

2009-07-25T07:23:00.001-07:00

Monday July 13th

2009-07-25T07:21:00.001-07:00

Galilee here I come! I woke up nice and early this morning, the bus left at 6:30 for Galilee. Of course, we would never just go to Galilee, we had to make several stops along the way.

Caesarea Maritima: This was my very favorite stop of the day. Caesarea is an absolutely beautiful harbor city built by King Herod and it became Judea's capitol after his death. The place was originally named "Strato's Tower" but then Herod renamed it "Caesarea" in honor of Augustus Caesar who gave the port to him. Herod wanted to expand the port's commercial role in order to supercede the port of Alexandria in Egypt. The site did not have a naturally good harbor, so Herod built an artificial one. There was no convenient water source so they actually built an aqueduct to bring water from a source 12 miles away on Mt. Carmel – can you imagine an aqueduct 12 miles long?! Caesarea was the base of the prefect Pontius Pilate, he left there to go to Jerusalem and it was then that he became involved with the Jews and the trial of Jesus. Phillip, Peter and Paul all served missions in Caesarea (Read about Phillip in Acts 8, Paul in Acts 23-26, and Peter in Acts 10). This great city was also the military base of Vespasian and his son Titus. Herod built a temple with a roman temple that was later replaced by a byzantine church which was then replaced by a mosque, and then that was replaced by a Crusader's church which was destroyed by an earthquake in the area. When we first got to Megiddo we went to the amphitheater and took a seat while Brother Brown told us a little about the place. We then watched an amazing movie telling us all about the history of the place. It was actually a really interesting movie and gave great visuals to connect to the ruins we saw outside. Then we went out on one of the Harbors and read in acts about Paul and the things he did in the area. It was really cool. Then we sang Hark All Ye Nations and then came the fun part! We walked out on the artificial harbor and it looked like you were walking on water. I went all the way out to the edge and it was the coolest thing – there was just a cliff on the edge going down. I wanted to jump in so bad, me and Annie almost did too but then we decided it probably wouldn't be worth it. I could have played out there all day, but we had a busy schedule to stay on top of. We left the harbor and walked along the beach until we got to a cool crusader's arch and Herod's mount that all the temple, churches and mosque were built on. Then we got on the bus and drove down to where the aqueducts were and spent a couple minutes there and then loaded up for the next adventure.

Megiddo: You heard me, the famous Megiddo that is the same as Armageddon which where the final battle is going to be. It juts out in the Northeast direction from the Carmel Range in the upper Jezreel Valley. It was originally ruled by the Canaanites and had 4 temples and sacrificial altars. It became one of Solomon's chariot cities at one point was defeated by the Egyptians. Joshua is able to take Megiddo and assigns this area to the tribe of Manasseh, but the Israelites were not able to conquer yet during Solomon's reign he had control over the land. When Tiglath-Pileser III annexed the Israelites to Assyria when he defeated Israel and he made Megiddo his regional headquarters. We watched a movie that didn't quite make it into my long term memory, but I think it did penetrate. Then we went and looked at the biggest archaeological cut. It is pie shaped and contains over 20 different strata. We went up to a high point with a great view of the area and took a lot of fighting pictures and then sang We Are All Enlisted, and then . . . (drum roll please) the BYU Fight Song! You know it! It was really fun to have 40 students yelling the BYU fight song at Armageddon, not sure I'll ever have that opportunity again. That pretty much sums up Megiddo-

Nazareth: After another bus ride we got to Nazareth and we visited churches galore.

Basilica of the Annunciation: This was my favorite church I've been to this entire trip! It had the most beautiful architecture and no incense or smoke, it was bright and beautiful and had the biggest most gorgeous stained glass windows. It commemorates the angel coming down and telling Mary that she was going to give birth to the son of God. One of my favorite features was ceramic pieces of Mary and the baby Jesus. They had a bunch of different countries make a ceramic piece to put up in the church and it was cool to see the one from China that had Mary and the baby as Chinese people, and one from Africa with them portrayed with black skin. Unfortunately the American representation was somewhat embarrassing. The plaque explaining it said it was supposed to look like foil was coming out, and let me tell you, it did! Then it was a mess of paints behind the foil and I was not proud to be an American at that moment since we were representing a sacred moment with a chic and crazy modern piece of art. There were some others that were pretty bad too though, so that made me feel a little better.

Church of St. Joseph: This church was built in the place that is traditionally where Joseph's carpentry shop was. This church was also very classy, but nothing like the first. You could walk downstairs into this cool little area that had three beautifully detailed stained glass windows honoring Joseph. The first was of the angel visiting him and telling him Mary was going to give birth to Jesus. The next was of Joseph and Mary being married and the last was of his death. There was also a baptismal font from the Byzantine time period down there and underneath us was a grotto which is the cavern where Joseph's workshop actually was. We weren't able to go down there but we were able to look down through a grate. Our group sang A Child's Prayer there and with a grotto below us and a church ceiling above it sounded absolutely wonderful.

Synagogue of the Temple: This synagogue commemorates Jesus teaching at the temples when he was a child and is built in the traditional manner that a synagogue would have been built like in Christ's time. That means that everybody sat in a circle along the walls instead of in rows looking towards the front. In the bible when it talks about every man being able to see Jesus, this is how it worked! We sang a couple hymns in there and Brother Huff talked to us about Jesus teaching in the temples and synagogues.

Mary's Well: According to tradition this is where the spring sprung up when Mary was told that she would be giving birth to Jesus the Christ. This was one of those churches with incense and smoke and the like, but it had a little extra somethin somethin. A trickle of water at the back of it going into a little bowl and that was Mary's well. That was our final stop in Nazareth and then we headed for the buses yet again.

Ein Gev: The next stop was Ein Gev in Galilee! This is where we are living the next 11 days and I think I'm going to be in heaven! We got here and I moved into an apartment with Monica, Stephanie Lacey and Bethany. I did a little blogging and filled out some of my field trip manual and then ran down to the beach. It is so beautiful here! It is warm and a little humid, it feels like Lake Powell. The beach has great sand and a ton of sea shells and I know we are going to have a blast playing out here. We aren't allowed to swim after five because there is no lifeguard on duty, but I did put my feet in and just enjoyed feeling the sand in my toes. Then it was time for dinner and it was delicious, they always give us good food. Ein Gev is actually a kibbutz we are staying at and we are in apartments with four people in each apartment. I am in the bunk bed room with Monica and it is going to be glorious because we control our own air conditioner in there and we both like it cold! After dinner I went out on the beach with my laptop and wrote all about my day while I watched the sun set over the Sea of Galilee. Life is unreal sometimes, I just felt so lucky to really be sitting on a beach in Galilee! After getting caught up on blogging I got a run in. They don't have a bike so I just was careful to stretch a lot to warm up and then I ran 3 miles along the beach and it was beautiful! It was a little dark though, I ended up running with a flashlight in hand for the second half of my run and stuck mostly to the roads around the kibbutz so I didn't sprain an ankle or something. After running I went to FHE where we each shared an insight we had learned on the field trip that day. Some were spiritual, some were funny, and it was just fun. We ended by holding hands and singing I Am a Child of God and then we ended up standing in a circle and singing Kumbya and that was the signal for me to get to bed!

Sunday July 12th

2009-07-25T07:19:00.001-07:00

Our last free day before Galilee, boy the program seems to be coming to a close rather quickly! After Galilee we have a week and a half until finals and then it is just one more week – wow! Today we had a branch service project right after breakfast.

Service Project: Brother Skinner talked to us in the dome meeting room about Orson Hyde and his life and then we all walked over to Orson Hyde Park and picked up trash. There wasn't a whole lot of trash, but I was at the back end of the group. I mostly picked up little pieces of green glass that somehow were all over the park. There were also a lot of cigarette butts, but other than that there wasn't much trash. After about an hour and a half or so Kristin, Rach, Mandy and I headed up towards the Old City.

Old City: We went in Lion's gate and headed for a convent Brother Skinner had told Rach about. On the way we saw a sign pointing down some stairs to the "birthplace of the virgin Mary". We decided to check it out, Rachel leading the way. This older gentleman pointed down the stairs and went down them himself. When we got to the bottom all we could see was a locked gate and there was just black nothingness inside. The man reached for Rachel's hand, but she pulled it away when she realized he was going to kiss it. Well, we started walking up the stairs and then the old man came up to me and reached for my hand. I pulled it away, but then Kristin was like – shake his hand. So, I put my hand in his and then he bent down and kissed it! This is a very strange thing for here, but even stranger is that he then proceeded to start rubbing his scruffy face on my hand. I immediately pulled my hand away and we walked right of there. I think the man might have been mentally handicapped or something because he couldn't talk and acted very oddly. After that we went to the convent place. Well, inside this convent there are some ancient pieces of rock that say something cool, but you have to pay 5 shekels to be able to see them. We didn't have very much time so we decided if we were going to pay we should come back and see them when we actually have time to enjoy what we are paying for. After that we headed towards Jaffa gate, we had an appointment with Brother Whipple and the YMCA tour at 11:15!

Bell Tower: The YMCA bell tower is right across the street from the King David Hotel. We almost couldn't get into the courtyard because they had a big YMCA children's event going on and the security wouldn't let us through at first, but then they finally did. Then Brother Whipple came and used his special elevator key to get us into the bell tower elevator. Only four people could go with him at a time, so we took turns. I was in the first group that got up there, so we started practicing some songs on the practice bell thingy. It is actually quite similar to a piano, but tricky because you have to play lower notes with your feet. You have to push down harder too, and the knobs are separated a lot more than piano keys are. They have two rows of knobs, the top row is flats and sharps and the second row down is everything else. There was a flight of stairs outside the bell playing room that led to the bells. The sound was almost deafening, but it was really cool to see the strings pull the bells and realize somebody right below you was just playing this little piano looking thing. From that area there was another flight of stairs that led you to the top of the bell tower. There was an enclosed room with four doors, one going out to each side of the bell tower. My favorite thing was probably the view from the top of the tower. You could see Jerusalem from a completely different view than I am used to. I could see the Mount of Olives, the Jerusalem Center, and even the Orson Hyde Park we had been at earlier that morning. I sat up there for a while and just listened to people play the bells and tried to decide if I was going to be brave enough to go down and play a song that all of Jerusalem would hear. I went down and practiced heart and soul with Rachel and then we played the song on the real Jerusalem bells! "I hear Jerusalem Bells a ringing . . . " I'm so glad I did play even if it didn't sound real great, it was a lot of fun and very exhilarating.

Museums: After the bell tower we wanted to go to the Israeli Museum, so we caught a taxi and went. We are so lucky we have the center – they pay for museum cards so we can get into almost every museum here for free. The Israel museum was really cool, but there wasn't a ton to see. They had this huge layout of Jerusalem from the Second Temple time period. The temple looked incredible and it was just neat to imagine looking off our balcony at a view of the temple instead of the Dome of the Rock. There were tons of cool outdoor artistic pieces, the kind you want to climb on and probably shouldn't climb on, but ended up climbing all over on anyway. We had fun just venturing around. Then we came to a big white Hershey kiss looking fountain, and a big black slate of marble. We took some pictures, but didn't know what we were looking at. We went and talked to an information desk and found out they were part of the Lost Books Shrine that was apparently underneath. We were able to catch a tour group that was just starting through and the shrine was actually really cool. It was all about the Dead Sea scrolls and the Essenes and had different artifacts they had found in the area the dead sea scrolls were found in. The layout was really neat, it was underground and the Hershey kiss fountain was hollow and so we were underneath it! After looking through that museum we decided to check out the Children's portion. They had a bunch of unique artistic things kids did, like put a piece of fur on a piece of paper and paint around it. Some were cool, but a lot were just weird. There was also a mask display and they had hundreds of masks from all over the world. They had the oldest mask in the world there and a whole story about this guy turning into a serpent and then speaking the tongue of man and so dying and yeah, it was weird, but kind of cool at the same time. That pretty much covers the Israel Museum – are next stop was right next door; the Bible Lands Museum. This museum had so many artifacts it was almost overwhelming! I walked around the whole thing and looked but I don't know how much really sunk in. They had things from all over the ancient near east, from the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Philistines and more. My favorite thing was the temporary display which was an Ancient Greece section. They had tons of ancient Greek pottery and it looked like it came right out of the movie Hercules. I think the reason I liked it so much was just because it was so different from all the other things we'd seen in museums that day. After an hour or so at Bible Lands we were all museumed out, so we caught a taxi and headed for home.

The Center: I spent from the time we got back until dinner blogging and emailing friends. The stinky thing is that I wrote Amber a big long email, but didn't realize that I had lost internet connection and so when I tried to send it I lost it! That was ok though, I'll just have to call her or write again some other time. Dinner went well and then I convinced Kristin and Rachel to head to Omar the wood carver's shop so I could put in my orders before we leave to Galilee.

Omar's: Ok, I have no clue why everyone just loves Omar, he's a legend yet he is not very nice. When I went to his shop he was kind of short with my indecisiveness and just seemed annoyed and was snappy and he can be kind of stubborn. The reason people keep buying from him though is because he legitimately does have the very best quality nativities and he does beautiful work. I was able to find a nativity set that I absolutely love, it's just gorgeous. The olive wood looks so flawless and Omar's work is really top notch. He is going to send it to my house and isn't making me pay until it gets there safe and sound. He ended up working out a deal with me and threw in a free camel. It was starting to get a little dark at this point so we weren't going to have time to walk home, so Omar gave us a ride. There is nothing better than getting a ride back to the center and not having to pay for it (although I guess I kind of did pay for it in a way).

Packing/Amber/Working Out/Bed: When we got back to the center I went ahead and packed up for Galilee! Ah, I was so excited to leave! It of course ended up taking a lot longer than I had planned. Then I gave Amber a call and actually got a hold of her. We've been playing phone tag for a couple days so it was good to actually get her on the phone. The timing wasn't real great though, she was in California with the Brockbanks at the time. I'm going to give her a call after she gets home though, I'll be able to call from Galilee. Then it was time to get a workout in for the day. I got on the bike for an hour and then ran 3 miles just looping around the center and it didn't even hurt! I did get a pretty good scare while running though. Brent and Mariah were on the 7^th floor balcony talking and I almost ran into them and my heart totally jumped out of my chest when all the sudden there were people right in front of me! It ended up being really funny though when I realized who it was. When I was done working out I showered and then crawled into bed.

Saturday July 11th

2009-07-25T07:18:00.005-07:00

Another Shabbat, I actually love having the Sabbath on a Saturday and I think I might miss it when I go back home. Today I slept in then cleaned up from our sleepover the night before and went to church.

Sacrament Meeting: Sacrament meeting was great, the theme was pioneers. Mary Kate McKay spoke and I am just so stinkin impressed with that girl. She had her entire talk memorized, quotes, scriptures and everything! It was great to hear her speak and see her looking out into the audience with confidence and I just felt like she was able to really connect with the audience because she was able to have that eye contact. Seeing her speak made me want to memorize my talks so that I will be able to bring the spirit in that same way. She shared a really neat story called Something to Keep for Christmas about a pioneer mother who had nothing to give her children for Christmas and decided to give them something they could keep forever. She had them all find something of their they could give away and then they went and gave those items to a family less fortunate than themselves. One of her sons asked her "why are we giving things away when we don't even have enough for ourselves?" This mother answered that they may not have a lot, but they had enough and they were coming out with more by giving to others what they could. I love pioneer – what humble faith, they are such great examples to us all. Kristin Boyd and Regan did a beautiful piano duet and then Brother (Nathan) Huff who just got released from the San Antonio Texas mission talked to us about pioneers from his mission field. Then McKenzie sang Every Breath while Annie was on the piano and it was absolutely beautiful. The meeting ended with Sister Skinner talking about the pioneers in her family and her ancestors who had joined the church. I couldn't help thinking that although I have ancestors that came across on the plains my close relatives are also pioneers. My Papa joined the church when he was 19, and together with my Nana they raised a family in the gospel. My parents have set an example for me and my brothers and it is because of their righteous choices that I was born in the covenant and am able to partake of so many blessing made available through my membership in the true church. Thank you to all the pioneers in my family. Modern day pioneers and pioneers of the past.

Sunday School: This meeting was also fantastic. We talked about magnifying our calling but not in the way I've heard it taught before. We talked about how truly magnifying your calling is not by going above and beyond and trying to do more, but by doing things the Lord's way.

Relief Society: In relief Society Mandy taught and compared a hiking trip to the temple. If you are prepared for hiking, take the right supplies, wear the right clothes and have conditioned your body, then it can be very enjoyable, but if you are not prepared you are not able to have that great experience. The temple is a special place. Special preparations should be made before we enter. Our class was privileged to have some women who have already been through the temple share advice on how to best prepare. My favorite came from Camille who suggested to live as if you've already made the covenants in the temple before you go through. If we are already living this way nothing in the temple will be a surprise and we won't have to suddenly change our whole way of living. Wow! Don't you love the edification three hours a week can bring!

Enrichment: After church was more edification because it was enrichment! We first met in the oasis and had refreshments and then Sister Brown talked to us about the sisterhood. She explained that every woman in the Relief Society had a divine calling to be a mother, sister or daughter to other woman in the Relief Society and all of us would experience each of those callings during our time in the society. She is a wonderful woman and brought such a sweet spirit to enrichment. After that we had a musical number and then they split us into four groups. We took turns visiting four different classrooms and in each we were taught about different women in the bible. Here's what I learned:

Classroom #1: In this classroom we learned about the 10 virgins. We discussed one topic I had never even thought about. When the 5 virgins who did not have enough oil knocked on the door the bridegroom said he could not let them in because he knew them not. If our brother, Jesus Christ, knows each of us on a personal level then why would he not know these virgins? Well in the JST it says these women knew him not. If we do not have oil in our lamps, or do not have a testimony of Christ, then we don't know him. If we do not know Christ then how can he let us in. He is waiting for us to come to know him and then he will welcome us with open arms.

Classroom #2: The next lesson we learned was about the woman who drew water from the well for Christ. I had never thought of her as a great woman from the bible, but she truly is one. When Christ asks her to draw water she does even though he is a Jew and she is a Samaritan. Then Christ teaches her about the living water he can give her. My favorite concept we discussed was that of the woman's relationship with Christ. She started out only knowing him as a Jew, then came to know him as a man, then a friend, and then as the Christ. Our own relationship with Christ grows in a similar fashion. We get to know his nature and character little by little. It is as we come to know Christ that we can partake of this living water he has to offer and that is why we must constantly strive to strengthen our personal relationship with him.

Classroom #3: Here we learned about Ruth and the great woman she was. I was amazed with this woman when I looked at what she sacrificed in her life to go with Naomi. I believe she went not only out of love and loyalty, but because she knew that Ruth had something she didn't. Naomi had the gospel and Ruth wanted that truth. I can't help but think that Ruth was led by the spirit to not only go with Naomi, and to glean in the fields of Boaz. She came to know Boaz through this association and later married him. Through that marriage she was able to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. She begat Obed who begat Jesses who begat David, and this is the lineage of Jesus Christ. This righteous young woman was close to the spirit and was blessed as a result. I know that if we listen to the spirit we too can be an instrument to the Lord and that he has a great plan for all of us if we are only willing to ask where he wants us to go.

Classroom #4: We learned about Mother Eve and the great firsts she was able to be a part of. We listed a number of things she did before anybody else on the earth. She was the first to trip the first to sacrifice, the first to mourn over a wayward child and the first to make clothes for her children. She also has claim on the first kiss on earth! Ha ha, I thought that was pretty cute. Eve was a part of a lot of firsts and she was a very brave woman. I liked the emphasis the teacher put on the fact that Adam and Eve did everything together. It was a partnership, a team. They did these firsts together. She is a great example of a good marriage. I respect Eve for the choices she made and the example she set for all of us as the first woman on earth.

After enrichment it was almost time for dinner, so I emailed for a few minutes and then got some nutrition in me. After dinner I got almost all caught up on blogging and then it was Branch Prayer and then of course bed.

Friday July 10th

2009-07-25T07:18:00.003-07:00

Classes in the morning and my first New Testament quiz! I did well, but I think I'll do even better on the next couple ones because I'll know better what to study. After classes was Galilee orientation! I can hardly wait until we leave, it sounds incredible! The rules are totally different as far as what we can wear around – I'll be able to wear shorts, that'll be super nice in this crazy heat. We also don't have a curfew, we just have to stay in the Kibbutz. We can swim whenever we have free time and I'll be able to run outside and not wear sweats, life is going to be great! I'm more excited for the water than anything. I didn't realize this, but the Sea of Galilee is actually a lake. I'll be swimming in fresh water and won't have to worry about salt and it's going to be warm and ah, I'm going to be in heaven! After orientation I spent the day doing wash and other little things to get ready for Galilee, and of course I got a workout in. I'm up to 2 miles running and I feel good, I've still been biking everyday at a higher intensity and I'm just happy and healthy and hopefully I can keep it that way. At 5:00 I went to the oasis to eat dinner but they had forgotten to prepare food early for the people going to synagogue!

Synagogue: So since it is Friday night Shabbat starts at sunset for the Jewish people. My group was with Brother Huff and we took vans to a synagogue in West Jerusalem. This synagogue is not orthodox and that is why we are allowed to visit. This sect is very open to visitors and it was great to be so welcomed. It is one of the most famous tourist synagogues to visit and I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to attend. When we got there one Jewish man explained what was going to happen and basically said just to try and catch on with the singing and enjoy yourself. We each got a book as we walked in the door and took a seat. The meeting consisted of lots and lots of reciting in the form of singing from the book they had given us. It was all Hebrew written in English and we sounded pretty ridiculous, but had a lot of fun. It was kind of hard to keep track of where they were at even though they went right in order because you would think you were with them, but then they would repeat a line or several words and you would be lost. Then at random times they would just sing this la la la thing and I was able to catch on to how the tune went, but I never knew when we were going to throw one of those in. There was one part where we all read together instead of singing, but the majority of the meeting was all sung. After the meeting the same Jewish man who had talked to us before hand did a little question and answer session with us. We asked about why people had stood and bowed at random times and whatnot and he said it was just tradition. At one part everybody stood, and then all but a few sat down. We asked him why and he said that at this part of the meeting those who had a close relative who died in the last year stayed standing to show they were mourning. My first thought was that it was neat that they honored the dead in this way. My next thought was that it was horrible that after a year you were expected to move on. I don't cry everyday about Brady but I know that I definitely still think about him a lot and I think he'll always be a part of my life, and I think that is how it should be. After that we loaded back into the vans and went back to the center.

Because they had forgotten to feed us dinner they ordered us pizza! Real pizza from Dominos! The problem was it was kosher pizza, so no pepperoni. There was some good pineapple pizza, but most of the pizzas were these weird veggie pizzas. Another problem was that they didn't order near enough pizzas for twenty five people, most people only got one piece, some got two. I did get two, but I was still starving! While we were eating Rachel told me that I should go talk to Kristin, so I did and she said she'd actually been wanting to talk to me for a while. Then she told me that it was the two year anniversary of the day her little sister Jessica had died. My heart just broke for her at that moment and we decided to go for a walk. We walked around the center and sat on the balcony outside the LRC and just looked over the city of Jerusalem and talked. She told me all about Jessica, what she was like, how she had died, and most important, the relationship between the two of them. I told her Brady stories and we talked about the grieving process. I had been thinking about Brady since the synagogue and it was great to have someone to talk to about all that stuff. I asked her if there was anything special she wanted to do for Jessica's day and she said that she would love to watch Remember the Titans or make French toast because those are two things Jessica loved. Making French toast wasn't really an option since we didn't have the supplies or a place to cook, and we tried to track down Remember the Titans but nobody had a copy. So we went down to my room and talked to Rachel and then put a couple mattresses together on the floor and watched Alex and Emma. It was fun just to relax and watch a chick flick, and then we all just slept sprawled out all over each other.

Thursday July 9th

2009-07-25T07:18:00.001-07:00

Thursday and a Herodian field trip in Jerusalem! This one was kind of randomly placed, we usually don't have them on Thursdays. I actually missed the van ride for my field trip! Yup, we were supposed to leave 7:15 and I was up there 7:14 according to my watch, but 7:17 according to Brother Masters. Luckily I was able to hop in with the first bus of the second group and catch up with my group. We pulled up to the gate by the western wall and I ran to the entrance to the Kotel Tunnel and found my group just sitting and waiting. We still had over ten minutes until our tour started, so I was totally good!

Kotel Tunnel: I had caught my breath by the time we started going through. The Kotel Tunnel is a tour of the tunnels built under the city of Jerusalem and from these tunnels you can see walls from the time of Herod and other ancient structures. The first thing they showed us was a small representation of Israel before it had anything built on top of it. Then they had all these pieces they put on and took off as they went through centuries showing what temples had been built and then destroyed and where the city border was and whatnot. Then we walked through a bunch of the tunnels to another room that contained an even bigger model of Israel, but this one represented the 2^nd Temple Period. This model had lights and was somehow engineered to have pieces move so you could see what the place looked like before the Muslim quarter was added and what it looked like after. After an explanation by our tour guide there we walked down some Herodian steps to a part of the Western Wall. This is the portion that was not ever completely dug out and is directly under the outside portion of the Western Wall. They say that down here is even closer to where the Holy of Holies and therefore where the Ark of the Covenant would have been in the temple. Because this wall is the closest the Jews can get to that holy site they consider this the most sacred place in the world and come and pray there frequently. We took some pictures and walked along the wall until we got to one of the gates that people would have passed through to get to the temple. As we walked along the wall we came to a stone quarry and saw a video that explained one theory of how the Jews could have transported such large stones to build the wall and temple mount and temple. We also saw an ancient Muslim home and several Herodian arches, including one known as Wilson's Arch that supported an aqueduct. We came out of the tunnel by Lion's Gate, I was surprised the tunnels went underground all that way! We made our way back to the temple mount through the Old City and then told our tour guide thank you – and goodbye.

Davidson Archaeological Park: Next was the park by the temple mount. I had seen it many times but had never actually gone in. This park has a couple different levels that have all been excavated and so you can see things from multiple time periods all in the same park. First we went into a visitor center of sorts and watched an introduction movie that explained what we would find in the park. Herod's temple complex had public areas below the mount on the west and south. On the west there is a side street that runs under the huge stairway supported by Robinson's Arch, and then continues to underneath the present Western Wall outdoor synagogue (that is where we walked along the wall in the Kotel Tunnel), and then under Wilson's Arch (also seen when in the Kotel Tunnel). At the park there are big Herodian stones that are called ashlars because of the square border Herod had carved into each. Some ashlars still make up a part of the wall and others are the ones that were toppled off the top of the wall into the street during the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 AD. There is a stone in the southwest corner that has the words "trumpeting place" inscribed on it and so they concluded that the shofar, or ram's horn, was blown from the southwest pinnacle of the temple. Another stone was found with a Greek inscription advising Gentiles not to enter the inner temple or they would be killed. These warnings were supposed to warn non-Jews to go no further than the Court of the Gentiles. Also in the park are multiple mikavot's, or purification fonts that are just below the southern wall and are east of the big staircase that would have run above Robinson's Arch. It is in these mikavot's that a person would have You can only see a little bit of the arch, it is still attached to the wall and is sticking out from it far above ground level. Below the arch in part of the wall is an ashlar with an inscription from Isaiah that unfortunately we couldn't read from our distance below – you could just barely see that something was etched into the rock. When we went down to see all these things by the southern wall there were 2 or 3 bar mitzvahs being celebrated and the reason was because three weeks from the 9^th of July is the day that the temple was destroyed according to the Hebrew calendar. This day now commemorates a bunch of horrible things that have happened to the Jewish people and it is now a day of fasting for the Jewish people. It was actually really cool to see these young boys taking religion so seriously and reading the torah to their family and friends. I think a bar mitzvah is somewhat like a baptism in our church. At this point the child is accepting responsibility as a member of the church in both religions, and so I imagine the joy of both the family and the boy is overwhelming. We continued along the southern wall and on the way saw a crusader arch and walked along part of the city wall. Then we came to a big staircase that would have been the staircase Christ would have walked up to go into the temple and we came to one of the two southern gates that took you into the temple, called the Double Gate. I guess that it was in this gate you entered the temple and paid taxes. When Neil Armstrong (yes the man who walked on the moon) came to Jerusalem he skeptically asked his tour guide, you've taken me to a million places Christ may or may not have walked, but I want you to take me some where you know for a fact that Jesus walked. So the tour guide thought for a while and took him to this gateway and said that Christ definitely would have crossed this very stone because he visited this temple and this is the gate he legally would have entered. We all thought that was just the coolest story of course and all got pictures in that very place – now I know I have walked where Christ has walked! East of this gate was the Triple Gate, which is where a person would have exited the temple mount. Below this staircase was a bunch of Byzantine dwelling and a crusader building. We continued to a courtyard of sorts where archaeologists found a bunch of pillars. They planted trees that look like pillars in each place they found a pillar and have the remaining pieces of the pillars scattered throughout the courtyard. The trees are supposed to help you imagine what the area would have looked like when the pillars were still standing. After that we finished up our tour of the park and moved on.

Burnt House: We hustled up to the Jewish quarter and went into the burnt house. This is a house they found that was most likely burned down when the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD. You could see burnt artifacts and stones but the highlight of the visit was the movie. A movie has been put together to help you understand how the house was burnt down. It is a drama all about a wealthy priestly family living in Jerusalem. Their son joins the zealots and the Romans have Jerusalem in a siege and there were these cool see through movie screens that came down. There would be people on the screens, so it looked like they were standing in the burnt house. In the drama they even gave an explanation of why the different artifacts in the burnt house ended up in the places they did. The movie was hilarious, but it was also really neat because it gave you a better emotional perspective of how it would have been to be a family living at the time. I really appreciated this perspective.

Wohl Museum: This museum also gave me a great laugh. You walk in and see the remainders of some homes from before the 2^nd temple destruction. We were just looking at the ruins when all the sudden the lights went out. I was thinking the power had gone out when suddenly this music started playing and then these blue lights came on. They flashed around different parts of the ruins and the music just kept on playing. This turned into a light show of the ruins with all different colored lights! Don't worry, I got a big portion of it on film. Then we went down to the next level and saw what is left of some of the wealthiest Jews in Jerusalem at the time of the 2^nd temple period. Actually, most of it was all one house and it was huge and beautiful! There were beautiful mosaics, tons of washrooms and ritual baths, and I was just wishing I could see how these houses would have stood when they were complete. There was a small part of the museum that showed a burnt area of the house and you could see the burnt and charred wood and some burnt mosaics and just seeing things burnt in this beautiful home I was humbled and began to wonder how my family would fare if we had been in Jerusalem at the time. Would we have survived, where would we have gone when our home and possessions were destroyed? I can't imagine what these Jews experienced and I pray I will never be in a similar situation. This museum was great and it was a good conclusion to such a great field trip.

The Center: When we got back I worked on blogs and got a workout in and then it was dinner, more blogging, wash and bed. I've been trying so hard to get all caught up with blogs before I leave to Galilee and it has been taking forever because I was horrible and didn't blog about Jordan forever! So funny story about the wash – I had left my oily bag in plastic bags at the foot of my bed so I would remember to put it in the wash. It leaked through two plastic bags onto the ground. Yes I'm serious, it was ridiculous! I think it might have stained the carpet, a big oil stain. I feel kind of bad, but I don't know how to get it out. The only cleaning solution we have is Windex, maybe I should try that! Anyway, I washed my bag three times in the washing machine and it seems pretty clean, I'm glad it wasn't totally ruined.

Wednesday July 8th

2009-07-25T07:17:00.003-07:00

Breakfast and classes and then we were free for the day. Trisha invited me to go eat lunch with Rida, he lives across from Shabon and had invited Trish and McKenzie for pita and humus. We headed out for the Old City and when we got there we couldn't find Rida. We talked to Shabon and he said that Rida had gone to try and bribe someone to let him go to Hijra, or the pilgrimage to Mecca. I guess that because of all the problems right now Israel has set restrictions on how many Muslims can go each year and if you are a Muslim with money you can put a little cash down and then you have a better chance of getting "randomly chosen" to go to Mecca that year. So Rida was gone bribing, so we weren't sure what to do. One of the security guards at the Jerusalem Center has a photography shop where you can get photos developed and so we decided to stop by but he wasn't there. It was pretty funny actually, his brother was there and gave him a call and he was going to come meet us but never actually did end up making it before we left the city. Kenz talked to him on the phone a couple times and every time he said in an hour, yet an hour later he still wasn't there. We ran a couple errands and then Shabon ordered pita and humus for us since Rida wasn't there. It was great! I love food, and I love free food even more. Plus, this was humus from Lina's Café and you can never go wrong with humus that good. It is so filling and I have to admit the taste is really growing on me and I might even miss having humus available all the time. He also ordered some drinks for a couple girls studying Arabic in the city and so we ended up eating and talking with them. Both are students at Brown University in the states and they just took the summer off to come and take classes for El Quds University in Israel. They live in this house owned by an older gentleman and it's a really cool set up. He asks people to pay what they can, but also hosts people for free if they can't afford to pay. They'll be living there for about 2 months and they said it's worked out really well so far but has been quite interesting. Every night different people are there and there can be between 6 and 60 people! Sometimes there is not even one other person staying the night that speaks the same language, it's kind of crazy. After talking and eating we checked for the security guy in the photo shop again and then headed back to the JC. I wasn't planning on staying out so long, so I was kind of bummed, but it was a lot of fun. When I got back to the center I worked out and then showered and went to dinner. Then I spent the night studying for a New Testament quiz and that was it for the 8^th.

Tuesday July 7th

2009-07-25T07:17:00.001-07:00

Tuesday was classes, well really only one class. We had an hour of New Testament in the morning and then announcements. Then Rach, Savannah and I went to visit some churches on the Mount of Olives.

Gethsemane Churches: We had to walk through the Orson Hyde Park to get to the churches and we were all in nice Sunday clothes and the sprinklers just happened to be on – that was fun. Really though, I didn't mind getting a little wet and I was glad to have something to cool me off since it was such a hot day.

Monastery of Mary Magdalene: The first place we went was the Monastery of Mary Magdalene. It is a beautiful monastery with several big gold dome things on top. We had to cover our heads in order to go inside this one. Underneath is buried Anastasia's mom's grandmother if that makes any sense and I guess that that family is related to the Queen Elizabeth who is currently the Queen of England. The two royal families are related which is totally cool! Inside is an icon called the "Hodigitria" and there is this whole story about Absess Mary getting an urgent telegram from an acquaintance and then she went and visited this acquaintance who gave her the icon and they had all these difficulties getting it back to Jerusalem but miraculously were able to get it to the monastery. Apparently when the guy gave them the icon it was dirty but when they put it up in the monastery they found it completely clean and shiny the next morning!

Jewish Graveyard: As we walked up the road to the next church we came to the big Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives and the gate just happened to be open. It is the biggest cemetery I have ever seen and is just covered with white tombstones with Hebrew writing. Across the valley from this cemetery is a Muslim cemetery and it is crazy to be in the midst of one and see the other across the way. The Muslim cemetery also has large white tombstones. We didn't stay long because there was a funeral going on down below us, but we did peek in and get a little look.

Church of Dominus Flevit: This church is the highest of the Gethsemane churches and was simpler than the monastery, but special in its own way. Right inside the entrance gate was a Necropolis and there were just boxes and boxes of bones. It was kind of cool to see, but kind of creepy at the same time. Inside the church there were benches and a big window at the front. From this window there was an incredible view of the Dome of the Rock and the city of Jerusalem in general. We decided to sing O Lord My God and it was a really neat feeling to be three young girls in a church on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city of Jerusalem. I'm really glad we were able to sing, I think signing brings a special spirit and helps you remember places you visit a little bit better.

Church of All Nations: This was my favorite of the three churches. We walked down and went into the normal Garden of Gethsemane (versus the section they let the Mormons into). On the southern end was a beautiful church. In front was a beautiful doorway covered in olive tree looking things. Inside there was a bunch of stained glass windows, darker than any I've ever seen before. The room was really big and had tons of benches. At the front of the room was a picture of Christ and on the floor was a rock. They think it was on this very rock that Christ suffered the atonement for all mankind. It is surrounded by thorns and there are doves as well. I went in and touched the rock, but then exited the little special area and sat on the side of church. There I thought about the symbolism and how cool it was that they put thorns which represented Christ bleeding from every pore, the physical anguish he felt. There were also doves though and this is a sign of the Holy Ghost. We know that our Heavenly Father sent angels to be with Christ until the time when he had to suffer all by himself and I just thought the whole thing was really neat. While I was waiting for Rachel and Savannah I offered up a prayer of gratitude thanking Heavenly Father for sending his son to suffer for us. I know that he felt not only the pain of our sins, but of our sorrows. Whenever I am having a bad day or feeling down, he has felt that and he understands exactly how I feel. Isn't it incredible to know that in this troubled life there is someone you can turn to who knows exactly what you are going through and exactly how you feel and he is just waiting with his arms extended to bring you into his loving embrace and comfort you. I am so grateful not only that Christ suffered for my sins, but that I was born in the church and have grown up with the knowledge of his atonement. Heavenly Father's plan is wonderful, no, it's absolutely perfect! Before we left we asked one of the priests if we could sing some hymns while we were there. He said no because a tour group had just come in, but he said if we came back a different time we would be able to. I really can't wait to go back, I think that will be a lot of fun. Then we ran back up to the center to catch lunch before it ended.

Old City – Crazy Shopping and the Rest: After lunch Rachel, Audrey and I headed out on the city to get some souvenir shopping done and boy did we ever! We saw a grocery store and decided to buy Olive Oil there since it would be cheaper than at a souvenir shop, and it was. We bought a big bottle and planned on splitting it, I paid and then put it in my back pack. Well, a while later we went to Shabon's and I put my backpack on the floor and later came back to it and it was surrounded by a puddle of olive oil. That's right, the bottle had broken in my bag and was spilling out all over the place! The problem with oil is it doesn't exactly just come out with water, it just sits and sits. There was no way I was going to be able to clean it in the old city, so I just stuffed it in some grocery bags. Shabon let me leave that bag and my other purchases in his shop until we were done and heading home for the day. While we were out shopping we had another little experience that really got my goat. I was in this t-shirt/sweatshirt shop and Rach decided to go look in the store across from it. She did and found an Israel soccer jersey she wanted to get her brother. She got it and came back to the shop I was in. When I was all done she realized she needed a bigger size so we went back to the jersey store. The guy was making all these awkward suggestive comments about how he would only exchange it if she felt his muscles and was just saying how beautiful and young we were and it was just not good. Rachel stayed so she could get a bigger jersey, but we all just wanted to get out of there. This guy even had the nerve to say that Rachel had beautiful young Ooglia – ugh, I was disgusted. I have never lost respect for anybody so quickly, that is not how you treat people. We did end up getting a bigger size though and then booked it out of there. Then we got my stuff from Shabon, got a couple other little things and headed home. It ended up being a long shopping day, but was quite successful. All I really have left to get is a couple nativities and then badda bing badda bang, I'll be good to go! We got back just in time to catch dinner. After dinner I figured out finances which took way too long and then video chatted with my Mom. It was so good, it had been way too long since I had last talked to her and I was feeling a little deprived. I know it is really time to call when I get several emails asking me if I am still alive. After talking to my Mom it was pretty late and so I just went to bed.

Monday July 6th

2009-07-25T07:16:00.001-07:00

Field Trip day – yippee! I was quite exhausted from the Red Sea excursion, but was super excited to actually get to go into the West Bank for the first time, and the only time while we are here. Bethlehem is a significant place. It is where David, Benjamin and our Savior Jesus Christ were all born. Rachel died giving birth here and Ruth met and married Boaz here. Bethlehem literally means "House of Bread" which is really neat considering it is the place where the living bread was born.

Check Point: When we finally got close we had to go through a checkpoint to get into the city. Luckily they had cleared it previously so we didn't really have to wait, we just got to drive in. So interesting fact, from the Israeli side you see pictures of Israel and Bethlehem and you see peace written all over and everything just looks so beautiful and whatnot. As soon as we drove through I turned around and saw the Bethlehem side of the wall and it was a totally different story. There were graffiti pictures painted all over expressing how upset the people who were stuck inside were. It was interesting to see the contrast and it made me hurt for the people who are frustrated and dealing with the consequences of this wall on a daily basis.

ARIJ: Our first stop was the ARIJ Applied Research Center where we met up with our good old Islam professor Dr. Musallem. He introduced us to one of his colleagues who briefed us on a geopolitical outlook of on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was interesting, but I was just pooped from the day before so I had a hard time staying awake. I really tried though by taking pictures and doodling all over my new field trip manual. When he was finally done talking they had a book of maps for sale, or just one big map. I thought about getting one since it really would be good to have a map of the country I've been living in for the last couple months, but then I figured it will probably change in the next couple months so I should probably just look it up online whenever I want to show someone something.

Bethlehem University: Next stop was Bethlehem University Campus. First we went to a Christian church. It is the oldest building on campus and it is where they hold all their masses for the holidays and whatnot. They talked to us there about the symbolism of the paintings on the wall. They have men painted on one side, women on the other and children at the front. Above the men and women were names of countries and the people were marching forward and it was supposed to symbolize peace and things moving forward into a peaceful resolution. We took a couple pictures and looked around and then headed out. It was really fun walking across campus and everybody was just looking at us and I'm sure they were just wondering why there were 80 white kids walking around in matching fanny packs and lanyards. We then piled into a conference room that happens to be the newest building on campus. It was definitely a contrast going from the oldest to the newest. We watched a movie explaining the purpose of Bethlehem University and how it worked and then they brought three ambassador students in to do a question and answer session with us. It was really cool to be able to talk to them about their daily lives and it was really humbling. These students are just like me or you, I mean one of the girls favorite books is Twilight and another plays on the school soccer team. Many of the students who attend the school don't live in Bethlehem and have to go through checkpoints everyday to get to school. This means that they are forced to rely on the Israeli's to let them go to school. Sometimes students miss class, or even tests because they are not allowed into the city. Not only do they have a hard time getting in, but because of the separation wall they are forced to drive way further than they normally would have to and spend hours commuting to and from school. Everything on campus shuts down by 4:00 pm so people can get home before dark. This experience changed my perspective because I saw students my age struggling. You could see the pain in their eyes when describing some of these things and I just hope that someday the people here can have peace. It was a really great learning activity and I am really grateful we got to talk to those students. Our last stop on campus was the library. On the top floor was the Turathuna Cultural Center where they had traditional clothing and tools and stuff from the Palestinian people. In the wall there was a hole and now it has glass on both sides so you can see through the wall to the outside. This is one of three buildings that was hurt when Israel attacked some years back and after that attack the school was shut down for 3 years. When the missile came in it destroyed the cultural center a lot of the books in the library were destroyed and have never been able to be replaced. The library suffered minor damage compared to other buildings. The building we were in before with the conference room was completely destroyed in the attack and another building was seriously damaged. Since Bethlehem University has opened they have had to close several times because Israel ordered them to, the longest was after the attack where three buildings were seriously hurt. I just cannot say enough how humbling this experience was, it just really taught me a lot and although I'm not sure what side I support, I know that I want peace for the sake of both groups. It was a really neat experience and I am glad I had the opportunity to go to Bethlehem University.

Lunch: This probably gets old, but once again we had an incredible lunch. It was in an outdoor tent thing and my group was smart, we sit right under the air conditioner. It followed the typical pattern of nice restaurants here – pita and a bunch of dips to start off. This one had some really good salsa type stuff that we just downed. I was glad I filled up on pita because the meat struggled, the French fries were good though. Desert was baklava with nuts, we are officially spoiled rotten.

Church of the Nativity and Manger Square: Our last stop was Manger square.

Helena/Justanian's Basilica: Near here is the shrine-basilica the Emperor Constantine built in the 4^th century over the site Helena his mother identified as the site where Christ was born. We are actually pretty confident this was the place since there is no other traditional places and the tradition goes back so far. The basilica is very nice, but it is just like the Holy Sepulcher and has incense and candles and is dark and I just don't like the feeling. In the 6^th Century Emperor Justanian built a new basilica in the shape of the cross and the place where the two beams cross is centered right over where they think Christ was born. We waited in a line to get down to the cave part where they think Jesus was born and they have a 14 point start marking the very spot they believe he was born. The 14 points represent the 14 generations between Abraham and David, and then the 14 generations between David and the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. The number 14 is significant too because 7+7 = 14 and seven is known as a perfect number. There is a spot in the cave where they thing the manager was and there they have another special marker and a picture of the three kings. It is kind of sad to me that they don't just leave these holy sites the way they find them, they have to change them and it just gives them such a worldly feel instead of a simple sacred feeling. They even covered the cave walls with a big wall covering thing, but then left holes in the wall covering so you could see there was a wall to remind you that Christ was born in humble settings. I am glad so many people value the Savior's birth though and that is the reason they want to build all this fancy stuff, so I guess that is good.

Franciscan Church of St. Catherine: Right by this basilica is the Franciscan Church of St. Catherine and it is in the unadorned cave in the basement of this church that Jerome produced a translation of the Bible form its original manuscripts into common (vulgar) Latin. This translation is the parent of most European translations of the Bible and to some extent the King James Version. We were able to walk down into these rooms and they have one with Jerome's tomb. They believe that it is in one of the other rooms that Joseph, Mary's husband, was visited by an angel who told him to flee with his family to Egypt to escape King Herod. My personal favorite room had a staircase you had to crawl up to leading out and a beautiful stained glass window. All 80 of us student crowded into this room to sing hymns and then Brother Skinner told us a little bit more about Jerome. I guess his parents were always getting mad at him because he spent too much time studying secular works but he never listened. Then one night he was sleeping and in a dream an angel visited him and told him he was studying the wrong things and so inspired him to translate the bible from original manuscripts. After that dream he dedicated his life to translating the manuscripts and was able to translate the entire bible before he died. I am very grateful this man dedicated his life to this cause or we might not have the bible in the version we are lucky enough to have today.

Milk Grotto: Next we went to the milk grotto and boy does this place have a good story. So apparently Mary was walking along feeding baby Jesus and a drop of milk fell to the ground and from the spot that the milk fell a white grotto popped up. It was actually a really neat place. We went inside and all the rocks were white, it was beautiful. They say that if you rub off a part of the rock and get a pile of powder and then like that powder you will be blessed with fertility. There is a room by the entrance full of testimonials from women who had struggled getting pregnant but then after visiting the grotto and licking the powder from the rocks were able to have children. It was actually pretty funny because a ton of students from our group were licking up powder and walking around letting everyone know that they were now fertile. I pretended like I was going to like the rock, but I don't know, I wasn't really feeling the whole lick a rock and then you'll be able to have kids kind of thing. I hope it just works out for me the natural way if you know what I mean. If I get desperate later in life I'll be kicking myself in the pants for not doing it and might even have to make a trip back to the milk grotto. There was a beautiful church above the milk grotto with some huge stained glass windows.

Manger Square: After the milk grotto we walked down to manger square and checked out the shops and pretty much every single shop had nativities up the wazoo and Bethlehem blankets (go figure). There was a nativity that was huge! The people were life-size Barbie size and kids could have used the stable as a play set! If I had the money and a way to transport it home I so would have gotten it, but I got pictures instead! Then we just looked around and then it was time to go back to the buses and leave Bethlehem – sad story.

Monday Night: We got back in time for dinner and then for FHE we watched a movie called Reflections of Christ that just had a bunch of pictures taken in Mesa giving you a visual of Christ's life and it was beautiful. The background music was gorgeous as well. Afterwards we expressed our feelings and it was pretty hilarious because it was spiritual and whatnot as we were all sharing our thoughts and then one girl in our group bore her testimony and opened it up for a group testimony meeting kind of thing, and it was silent. It was totally awkward, so then our FHE dad just asked if there was a volunteer for the closing prayer and that was that! I spent the night getting caught up on New Testament reading and then went to bed.

Wednesday June 18th

2009-07-25T07:05:00.001-07:00

It's my Birthday! I'm officially now 19 – I know, I'm getting up there! It was a wonderful birthday thanks to all my great friends I have here! I woke up bright and early to get a workout in and start the morning off right. It was cleaning checks, but my roommates (Rach and Trish) refused to let me do a thing, I couldn't even make my own bed, apparently birthday girls aren't allowed to clean. It was really sweet of them, I have the bestest roommates! Unfortunately having a birthday doesn't get you out of class – we had a lot of hours sitting today. I thought I had avoided the big group birthday singing when I made it through Old Testament, Judaism, and Jordan Orientation without my birthday being mentioned (Just for the record, that is 5 hours of sitting thus far). I did get a small round of applause when I went into Judaism, and was hoping we could leave it at that but then right before everyone left the orientation Rach announced it was my birthday and of course I got a little birthday song. It's so awkward when everyone is singing because you don't really know what to do because you are not singing and everyone is looking at you – so I just smiled, and yeah. . . During Jordan orientation they warned us once again about modesty in Jordan and said to be careful because the guys are more aggressive, like in Egypt and they told us we shouldn't walk around with wet hair. I guess in Jordanian culture, if you have wet hair they think that you just had sex, and that is not quite the message we want to send, so definitely going to make sure not to do that when walking around Jordan. After orientation it was lunch and then I went down to my room and SURPRISE! There were stars all over my bulletin board with nice notes on them, and Rach wrote me a really cute card too. I was so excited! I'm so lucky I have friends here who made my day so great. Rachel came down and I jumped on her with a huge hug, and we were just in a silly fun mood. We decided the only solution was to make a music video to one of my favorites – Josh Gracin, Unbelievable. So we positioned the camera, cranked up the music and had a blast! We sang and danced and looked absolutely ridiculous, but know I have a great music video dedicated to my 19^th birthday that will last through the centuries. After our own private dance part we went and baked cookies at the Whipple's apartment. I had previously bought cake mixes in the Old City to make cake mix cookies. I couldn't find German Chocolate cake mixes, so we got chocolate instead. The Whipple's were so nice – Sister Whipple let us borrow all the ingredients and supplies we needed to make the cookies. Brother Whipple just sat and talked to us and it was a lot of fun to hear about what he had learned in Jerusalem and the experiences he had enjoyed most. As far as the cookies went, in true Stephanie style I couldn't remember the recipe for cake mix cookies (easiest recipe ever), and it was 3:00 am in Utah when I needed the recipe, so I decided to look it up online. I don't think it was quite the right recipe because the cookies were nothing like ours, although they still tasted just fine. It was basically cake in cookie form. Also true Stephanie form I ate about half the cookie dough (if you could call it that) before we even got it in the oven. I had planned on giving out some of the cookies as a thank you, but since they didn't turn out quite as planned I decided against it and instead ended up eating about half of the cookies too. After cookies Rachel and I realized how little time we had to finish our Islam midterm before class at 4. We literally finished at 3:56 pm and ran up to print them off and make it to class on time! Phew – that might have been cutting it a little too close. Class passed relatively uneventful, we turned in our midterms, mine ended up being 13 pages single spaced, and then at the end of class we got our traumatizing 7 page papers back graded and I got an A, which I was very pleased with (we're up to 7 hours sitting now FYI). After that class was dinner, and about half way we were sitting around telling our most embarrassing stories when Catherine Taggert stood up on her chair and yelled . . . we have a birthday! Oh boy- she then went on to say, "those of you who don't know Stephanie, she's baby hungry, she sleeps up and at an odd angle so the blood will rush to her head to not only make her smarter, but she also thinks it gives her a better nights rest." It didn't stop there, but then Dan decided to raise his hand and told about how I thought if you came at a fly straight on it couldn't see you and in elementary school I had been asked if I was a midget. Golly, I love tons of attention (not)! After dinner we had a movie scheduled at 7:00 pm that we had to write a paper on. So it was back into a room to sit for another two hours. The movie was actually really funny, but I was kind of done sitting, which makes sense since at this point we were up to 9 hours of sitting! They are trying to kill us slowly by numbing our behinds. After that I went back to my room to find a fort! Rachel had made me a birthday fort, we named it the Birthday Bed Bonanza. It is two mattresses on the floor with a huge stack of blankets and of course a sheet hanging overhead. At the foot of the mattresses was a nightstand with laptops and movies all ready to go. I told you I have the best roommates. We are going to leave up the Birthday Bed at least until Trisha's birthday which is on Saturday. After that we of course had to turn on some music and have a little fun and then most of the girls went to play volleyball, they set up teams and tournament brackets. I didn't sign up because I didn't want to make whichever team I was on lose, there is a reason I run people. When they all go back I was just sitting organizing pictures and videos when Cat, Ashley and Erin came in with their speakers and the song "They Say It's Your Birthday" playing. I then got a special number from them including multiple hip thrusts and some legit air guitar playing. Ha ha, it was great! It was nice of them and I just had a great birthday. The fun didn't end there. Trisha, Rachel and I decided to all sleep on our Birthday Bed, I got the middle because it was my birthday. We turned on the Notebook, but didn't make it in very far because we were all just exhausted – so we went to bed. Shout out to Rachel for making my 19^th birthday so incredibly fun and memorable. Thanks girlie -

Sunday July 5th

2009-07-11T10:22:00.001-07:00

I WENT SNORKELING IN THE RED SEA! Yeah . . . Ok, let's back up a bit. This morning we loaded the buses at a totally unreasonable hour. You should never get on a bus before 6:00 am, that is just too early. We had about a 4 hour bus ride during which I did a little journal writing, but mostly slept, and then we were at the Red Sea!

Snorkeling: We went to this nature reserve place where they protect the coral and went snorkeling there. It was honestly some of the best snorkeling I have seen, the fish would swim right with you and even when you swam into them they wouldn't swim away. I had a blast swimming too, I think I was supposed to be born a fish. I was so content just floating on the top of the water looking at tons of fish and coral and whatnot. The coolest fish I saw was probably a swordfish! Ok, so I don't know if it was really a swordfish, but it had a long snout thingy and was silvery blue and was just really cool. It was really funny, at one point Rach swam over to me kind of nervous and said that she had gone out further than we were supposed to accidently and she thought she had seen a shark. I wasn't too worried, I figured if I just followed Aunt Cindi's advice and made sure there was always someone out further than me I would be ok. After an hour or so I decided I should probably go in since we only had 40 snorkels we were sharing between seventy something people. I could have stayed out all day though. I went in to the beach and sat in the sun for a while and watched people play volleyball and Frisbee. Once I was dry I knew it was time to get in the water again. This time I got a group to go out as far as we were allowed, which wasn't very far. Then they all went back in and I stayed out and just floated on my back and swam around and people watched. I just love people watching, you see so many great things it is definitely one of the more entertaining activities to do in life. After a while I headed back in for a snack and started talking to Mason and Emily. They had seen Polaris's and were going to go find out how much it was to rent one, so I decided to go with them. Well, I didn't have my shoes with me, but figured I'd be fine. I was fine, but my feet definitely got hot and we walked over a bunch of rocks and I was just stupid not to bring shoes. I didn't want to complain, but my feet were not feeling too rad. I thought we were only going down our beach, but when the renting place wasn't there we ended up walking down like three beaches to find the one that was renting the wave runners. Get this – it was $30 for 15 minutes. No, I'm not kidding, and no I would never pay that price in a million years. So then we walked all the way back to our beach and I was barefoot all this time. No surprise, when we got back to our beach I went and got shoes on first thing, and then went and got in the water to cool off. The beach actually was not real great. There were rocks all over and no sand, just dirt stuff. You couldn't go in where the water started because they were protecting the coral reefs, so you had to take a bridge out to where it was deeper and that is where you could get in the water and swim. It was kind of cool though because from the bridge you could see a bunch of coral and fish swimming around and then at the end of the bridge you could get in and go swim around big mounds of coral and lots of fish. I stayed in the water snorkeling until it was time to go. We cleaned up camp, turned in snorkels and loaded onto the bus.

Beach #2: I say bus because all 72 of us squished into one bus. We came in two buses, but one had a broken air conditioner that they were trying to fix, so we all somehow got into one to go to the next beach. We went to the beach that we had gone to the night we stayed at the Kibbutz before going to Egypt. There were tons of shops and carnival type things to look around at, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go on another rocky, dirty beach. Actually, there was a group of us who didn't really want to do that, so we found a hotel pool to sneak into. It was great, Lydia, Mason, Michael, Ian and I all just pretended like we knew what we were doing and walked right into the hotel pool. It was actually a really cool pool with waterfalls and rocks and everything, but it was only a couple feet deep. It had a really slick bottom so we would play tag on our knees, or where you had to sit on your bottom. That became somewhat difficult when it got to the deeper parts where I would start drowning and couldn't follow the taller guys, but hey, it was still a blast. There was a lifeguard there who kind of surprised me. My hair was originally up in a pony, but then I took it out and he actually pulled me to the side and told me I needed to put my hair back up. The funny part is there were three girls sitting on the edge of the pool with their hair down, so I'm not exactly sure why I had to put my hair up. Maybe it goes back to the whole wet hair down they think you just got done having sex. Anyway, I didn't really mind, it was just an interesting request. When we were done swimming we looked around the shops a little more and then loaded onto the buses again. Luckily this time there were two so we didn't have to squish because we had about an hour drive until we got to the Kibbutz.

Kibbutz Yotvata: This is the same kibbutz we ate at on the way to and from Egypt and I love it. They have such great food, such a great atmosphere, and of course the best ice cream in the world. No joke though, I am in love with two of their flavors: South American and Rocher Ferraro. Goodness gracious, that stuff is good. The last time we had been to the kibbutz I saw a deck of playing cards with pictures of Israel that I had wanted to buy but had forgotten to get before we left, but they were out! I was so sad, hopefully I'll be able to find a deck somewhere else since we probably won't be back at that kibbutz again. When we were all full and happy we got back on the bus to go home and I was ready, it was a tiring day.

The Rest: The bus ride home was pretty good. We played a massive game of Mafia where there were 8 murderers, 8 detectives, and then a Superman! It was pretty legit and quite fun. Russell was the MC and we all drew parts from his hat and I got to be a detective. There were like six of us all sitting really close who were detectives and so it worked out great. We got lucky and guessed a lot of the murderers and so during town council we would just gang up and take those mafia out! So we were able to beat out all the mafia and it was just great. After the game I just slept which worked out well because next thing I knew we were back at the JC. I walked in, put my bag down and climbed straight into bed.

Saturday July 4th

2009-07-11T10:21:00.005-07:00

It's the 4^th of July! Hooray – I love America! Everybody wore their red, white and blue to church and it was so fun to see the patriotism. We didn't sing typical 4^th of July songs because we do have people who live in Israel in our ward and that just might not be the most polite thing, but we did sing Amazing Grace, which is a great one. I must admit I felt a little homesick all day, probably because not only was it Shabbat, but the 4^th as well. I knew if I was at home I would be playing with my family, we always do such fun things to celebrate the 4^th. Sacrament was great, but afterwards I saw this book sitting on a table in the 8^th floor lobby and started looking at it. The book had pictures of BYU campus and some of the other things in Utah and it just made me miss home even more. At that point I was pretty emotional but went to class anyway. When I started crying for no obvious reason I was just a little embarrassed and not exactly wanting to be around people, so I decided to go outside. On the western side of the center is a biblical garden of sorts where they have olive crushers and olive presses and whatnot, and a wall that looks over the city. I climbed up and sat on the wall and tried to get my tears in check. It was a beautiful day, the wind was blowing, the sun was shining, and I could have stayed out there forever. Plus I really didn't want to go back in since I totally looked like I had been crying. When Sunday School ended I went in to fulfill my responsibilities as Relief Society greeter. I was greeting people, thinking nobody could tell I had been crying and then Raven asked me if I was ok. This led to me starting to cry all over and so she took over for me and I went back outside. I sat outside for a while, but just was so homesick I couldn't stop crying. So I went down to my room and looked at some pictures of my family and then fell asleep. I ended up sleeping all the way until dinner at 4:00 pm. I probably not only needed the physical rest, but the emotional rest as well.

BBQ: For dinner we had a BBQ! Some of the students had decorated the Oasis all red, white and blue with ribbons and bows and flags all over. It looked wonderful! The food was great too. We got the works . . . hamburgers, hot dogs, shish kabobs, grilled peaches and grilled pineapple, and then lots of cake and ice cream. Everything tasted wonderful even if it didn't taste quite like the American equivalents. People sat on the grass and it was just such a fun atmosphere. Of course we had a ton of fun and got some pictures afterwards. I was so content outside, it was just such a beautiful day. Chadwick and I just sat and talked for quite a while, mostly about the 4^th of July and what our family traditions are. It was a lot of fun and I was glad to tell Chadwick all about my family!

Games: After dinner I asked Rachel if she wanted to go out on the grass on the 7^th floor and play card games on a blanket. She said yes, so then we got Ashley, Chadwick, Lydia, Erin and Mandy to come play with us too. Ashley had Phase Ten, so we started that but didn't even get half way through. It was a lot of fun though and I was winning when we ended, we are going to try and finish another day though. After games we stayed outside and just talked and played. I was in a skirt, but for some reason they wanted to put up a cheerleading stunt and I was the one who got dubbed to go up in the air. It was actually quite hilarious and I had a blast trying to stunt in a skirt with people who were all different heights and hadn't done it before. It was an amusing experience and I am proud to say that not only did we get a solid half-up, but we were able to get an extension in there too! That of course was after I went and changed into pants, but nonetheless it was impressive. We danced out there and did cartwheels and handstands and interpretive dancing games, oh and I almost forgot – photo shoot! We took about a gazillion pictures and it ended up being a really good night.

Branch Prayer and the Aftermath: We played until it was time for branch prayer and then went in and sang some songs, heard from the sneechers about different people in the group, and of course ended with a prayer. Just about when everyone was getting ready to leave we started hearing someone making a commotion and it just so happened to be Mason being pushed on a wheelchair and a whole bunch of other people around him with flags and stuff and Mason threw candy! It was our own little parade. Carrie was carrying an army plane/kite thing around and that was supposed to be a float and it was really cute that they were trying to do a parade thing and you'll never hear me complain about free candy. After the parade had ended and we had cleaned up the mess they announced that they had fireworks. So we all tumbled outside and watched as Mason lit the wimpiest little fireworks you've ever seen – they were like sparklers that didn't move. It was fantastic though. We all sang God Bless America and Yankee Doodle and had a grand old time. The funny thing was there was a bunch of fireworks in the city, but they were probably for weddings and not for the 4^th of July, but we still watched them and appreciated them and it did make it feel a little bit more like a patriotic holiday. When the fireworks had all ended a group of us started playing catch phrase and boy was it fun! We had a huge group and it can be a pretty intense and pretty funny game. I accidentally kept guessing for the wrong team, but I wasn't the only one. When we were catch phrased out I went down and got ready for bed and then went to find Aubrey. She had told me she would rub out my leg if I came to her. I found her in the shekel shack with a big group doing "girl talk". It turned into a dating advice session and basically a guy would ask a question and all the girls would answer and then a girl would ask and all the guys would answer. The best was Brent who gave a hypothetical scenario of a boy on a study abroad in Spain. We all actually knew he was talking about himself and basically the gist of the scenario was that he wants to kiss a girl in Galilee but is wondering if that will jeopardize his chance with other girls. Guys can be real idiots sometimes – poor Brent, he lost a chance with almost every girl here after that night. I was so comfortable in the shekel shack, I was curled up on bean bags and I think I would have just slept there if I had my alarm clock on me. Finally I pulled myself away and got into bed, not looking forward to a really early start the next morning.

Friday July 3rd

2009-07-11T10:21:00.003-07:00

Wake up and study before breakfast, eat and go to New Testament! That's right, already starting our new classes. We spent most of the two hours playing a little get to know you game where you tell everybody in the class something they don't know about you. A lot of people shared silly things they had done in their childhood and so I'm not sure why but I told everyone about how me and the boys would play on the tramp and how one person would sit underneath and try and hit the feet of the people jumping with a bat. I remember playing that for hours, but now it seems kind of silly, I think at one time it was challenging though. For the rest of the semester we will only have three classes, which are New Testament, Ancient Near East and our Field Trip Course. After New Testament was our Arabic final. I only studied about an hour or so, and I over studied. It was the easiest final I have ever taken. The class is a pass/fail so I don't think Ayman Jebara, the professor, cared to make it very hard because he doesn't have to worry about hitting a certain GPA or anything. I was very glad it was so easy and walked out of there so happy, knowing I only had one more final! AHHH- After Arabic I got a workout in then showered and ate lunch. I was in my room talking with Trish and then Rach came in and we suddenly decided to go out on the city. I had not left the JC since the Separation Wall field trip on June 28^th – it was about time to get outta there. We went to Aladdin's and then in through Damascus gate. Our venture out was all about shoes and gummies. Some of the girls wanted jelly shoes and everybody wanted to restock on gummies. I really love the Old City, I'm completely comfortable there now. We just walked around and looked at headbands and shoes and whatnot and then headed back to the center for dinner. After dinner I decided to get my life in order, which included cleaning and wash. Then Alyssa came in to dye Rachel's hair. I was very glad she wasn't asking me to do it since I have no idea how to do any of that kind of stuff! The dye Rachel bought had instructions in Hebrew so her and Lyss had to go up to security and have them help figure out what was going on. I wasn't actually helping with the whole dying part, but I did become the official photographer and entertainer. We just talked and I showed them a bunch of pictures and videos on my computer and we had a good old time. The best was when they were washing out the dye. Rachel was on the floor with her head in the tub, and Alyssa was standing up with the shower head in hand washing it out. The bathroom is so small, it was somewhat awkward positioning. In order to take pictures I was standing on the sides of the tub. All of us were just dying laughing and I got so many great pictures and I think whenever I look back and see those pictures I will immediately start cracking up! It was a good night to relax and just get all our pent up energy from stressful finals out. After that I still needed to get a workout in, even though it was almost eleven o'clock at night. I didn't actually get on the bike, but I did do abs and stretched and Emily and I did Russian twists – ha, those are fun. I was just too exhausted to bike, so I didn't. Then I went back to my room and didn't want to shower, so I stalled by playing solitaire. After finally showering Rachel and I settled down to watch Because I Said So and I loved it! I was glad Rachel edited it for me though, it had potential naughty parts. Afterwards we had a big talk, one of those talks where you learn about life, and maybe some things you weren't really sure you wanted to learn. It was probably good I learned them though, and that was that. . .

Thursday July 2nd

2009-07-11T10:21:00.001-07:00

Well, Rachel came into the room about 1:30 am from finishing up on studying, and at that time I just got up to start studying. I studied all the way until 7:00 am, when I took a short break to grab some food from the oasis. Then I studied until 8, which is when our Old Testament final was scheduled for. I felt ready for it, but was still kind of nervous. The test was hard. It really tested your knowledge of the Old Testament, but I felt like it was a pretty fair test. Most the things on the test were on the study guide, so I was ready for them. The map section and the T/F section (shockingly) were the very hardest. The true false just was messy with the wording so some I just wasn't quite sure on. We had two hours to take the test and I didn't finish up until the last minute, but at least I did finish – I know a lot of people didn't even come close to finishing. After that I felt good, all I had left was an Arabic final and my Field Trip Course final, and I wasn't planning on studying much for either of them. I took a minute after the test just to relax and hang out. Then I got a workout in and then grabbed lunch. I was somewhat brain dead at this point, so I snuggled up on my bed and watched Meg Ryan in French Kiss. It was a cute movie, but it just stinks when the main guy isn't very good looking. After the movie I just wasted time until dinner, I don't even know what I did with myself. After dinner Rachel, Jonah, Alyssa, Emily Willis and I went to West Jerusalem. It was kind of funny, at dinner I had asked Jonah to go with us since we needed a guy. He said he would, and then I talked to the other girls and they said they wanted to go swimsuit shopping at a shop in West J. Ha, poor Jonah swimsuit shopping with four girls, he agreed to stick it out anyway. We hit up Aladdin's on the way to West Jeru and picked up hair dye for Rachel at a little store on the way. Her blond is starting to show through so she wants to dye it again so it is all more one color. When we got to the swimsuit it was closed, Jonah wasn't too sad. At this point we decided to visit Chocolate by the Bald Man, but I definitely wasn't thinking about ice cream. I was literally about to wet my pants. As soon as everyone was done with the ice cream we went to try and find some place, but things weren't looking so good for me. Then we went to a hostile and after waiting forever while this lady talked to a tourist I finally found out where the bathroom was and ran up. Everybody was teasing me and just laughing because I was doing the potty walk and just dying – ha ha, it was quite funny for those who weren't concerned about their bladder at the time. Once I was good to go we hit up Ben Yehuda street and it was hopping! It is way more fun to be there Thursday nights than on Friday nights. The shops were all open, there were street performers, and there were even people out dancing in the street. This one old man and his son were on top of a van at the end of the street dancing, it was pretty stinkin' funny. We saw a lady playing a harp in the street and started talking to her while we were waiting for the van from the center to come pick us up. This guy came up and grabbed her harp string and it was super awkward. He was laughing at the lady playing, and she just stared him down and I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody look so mad. I thought it was both rude and very strange this guy just came up and did that, but whatev. We found out that this lady actually works at a Therapeutic music school and the reasons she plays in the streets is to raise money for that school. She seemed like a nice lady and she said if we brought our friends from the center who know how to play the harp to visit she would totally let them play. Then the van came and we took off and went home and I went to bed early so I could wake up and get a little studying in for Arabic in the morning. I kind of messed up my sleeping schedule this week by going to bed early and getting up early, but I think it worked out and hey, I got all my studying in and I only have 2 more finals! I feel good (na na na na na na) I knew that I would -

Wednesday July 1st

2009-07-11T10:20:00.003-07:00

Stink – classes today, yet we still have three finals to go. We had Old Testament for an hour, then Ancient Near East for two hours and then Old Testament for an hour – no, I'm not kidding. After ridiculous amounts of class I studied it up and then more class! We had Arabic for an hour. Luckily we won't have any more of those classes until after finals are completely over. I still can't believe they had a full day of classes for us, they must be crazy! After classes and dinner we had a review for our Field Trip Course. Brother Brown was the professor and he just told us the best way to study for it. I guess a bunch of the students have found clues sitting around the center having to do with the field trip final. We have found 30 clues and the test is only 45 questions, so I am honestly considering just studying the clues and that is it since it is a pass fail course. We are putting the clues all into a google document so that should make that final much less stressful, in fact I daresay easy! After the review I attempted studying for Old Testament, but it wasn't working out to well, I was just so exhausted from the long day. Idecided to go to bed and wake up early to finish studying. Wow, I just gotta say that this is the hardest semester of school I have had so far, partially because the material is more foreign to me and not as interesting, but I think I'm going to survive, just one more hard one and then I'll be good to go!

Tuesday June 30th

2009-07-11T10:20:00.001-07:00

I woke up early to review Judaism before breakfast. Reviewed until 9 am, and then it was test time. I walked upstairs at a quarter 'til to print off the movie review 2-page paper we were supposed to turn in, but the internet wouldn't work so I couldn't retrieve it from my email. I was starting to really stress when it was 5 'til and I still couldn't get my paper – and then Lydia walked in. She had a flash drive in hand and was clearly printing off her paper. I asked her if I could use her flash drive after her, and she just so happened to have an extra on her! Oh my goodness, I love that girl, she saved me and I was able to turn my paper in on time and make it for the test. The final was only 24 questions and I started laughing when I got it. I can't believe how many hours of studying I put in for a 25 question test. The worst part was, the test only asked about like two things on the study guide. I couldn't believe it and was wishing I hadn't spent so much time studying. I finished in about 20 minutes and then studied for a while. We were supposed to correct it as a class at 10, so at 9:50 I decided to just go through and make sure all my answers were correct and ended up changing several I hadn't been 100% sure about. We corrected it ourselves and I can honestly say I have never been so tempted to cheat in my life. Every single question I had changed in the last 10 minutes was wrong, and every single one originally had the right answer. My stinkin nerves, I should've just gone with my first answer, whenever you second-guess yourself you end up getting it wrong, I do this kind of thing all the time. I still pulled out ok though, and just needed to move on and shift gears for the Islam final. We had the Islam final at 4, so I spent the rest of my free time studying and surprisingly felt ready despite the fact we had so much material to cover. I was done in 30 minutes and I cannot tell you how relieved I was to have the worst of my finals over with. I went down to my room and called my mom and just relaxed and chatted with her forever. I felt good about the test, I know I missed some but I think I did well. It was great to talk to my mom, very distressing and I just love getting caught up on what the boys are up to and how life in Provo is going and just about everything. She told me all about girl's camp and I was glad I caught her before she left. My mom is so good, she put a lot of work into camp and I know those girls are going to have an incredible experience because of her effort. After getting off the phone with my mom it was time to start studying again, this time for Old Testament. I persisted until dinner, and then got on the computer and signed up for an envelope of nursing classes, which was very exciting! The only one you actually sign up for in the program is Nursing 294, it's a lecture and lab class. Other than that they just give you a list of classes you have to work into your schedule. I had already signed up for the ones I knew I needed to take, but they ended up conflicting with the Nursing 294, so I had to switch my whole schedule around and ended up having to email three teachers to see if I could add. They all emailed back and said I could just bring an add card on the first day. Unfortunately I had to apply to take my Nursing 294 lab at 7:20 am because that is the only time that worked with all my other classes, but I'm just glad my schedule actually worked out. We all put our first three preferences for which envelope we wanted and I bet I will get my #1 choice because only the people who have to take the class at 7:20 am would be crazy enough to put it as their first choice. Tonight was pretty productive, after signing up for classes I started my wash, blogged a little more and got some running in! I ran ¾ mile and luckily it didn't hurt at all! So I'm back in business! I'm going to have to work up slowly and be careful, but I'll get there. Then I closed off the evening with a little bit of Hannah Montana the Movie and called it a night.

Monday June 29th

2009-07-11T10:19:00.007-07:00

Wow, my days are so boring, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Since I went to bed so early I woke up nice and early and studied Judaism until breakfast, and by that point I felt ready to take the test! Phew- I think I prefer getting up early to study than to staying up late. Not only am I much more productive, but I don't have any distractions because everybody else was up all night studying. The only drawback is when you accidentally don't give yourself enough time to get what you needed to done. After breakfast I turned my attention to Islam, and studied those stinkin maps, and some other stuff, all the way until lunch. We had sack lunches, so I ate mine real quick and then went and worked out. I'm not sure what is going on with the weather here, but I swear it is getting more and more humid. I feel like every day I sweat more and more on that bike, but I guess it could be because I've been bumping up the intensity. Either way, that miserable little weight room is hot. I am now in the habit of going in, opening every door, turning on all the fans, and turning on both air conditioners. I also now use a little gym towel to constantly wipe the sweat, I mean perspiration (I am a girl) off my body. It is gross in there, but I am just grateful I can get on the bike and that my leg didn't hurt at all! Biking has become my me time with all this studying happening during my free time. I just relax and bike and listen to music and conference talks and play solitaire. I am addicted to conference talks, I just want to hear all of them! I've been listening to the April session conference talks, and I really think that being able to listen to those messages over and over again so conveniently is such a blessing in my life. Those talks really lifted me up during finals and helped me stay relaxed and focused. After my workout I showered and what do you know, I studied Islam some more! Trish, Rach and I were all studying in our room and were all hungry for dinner. We started trying to find a snack, but all we had was a chocolate cake mix I had bought to make cookies with. Well, we were desperate, so we took our bathroom cups (we each have one they gave us when we first got here) an put a little water in them. Then we put some cake mix in and mixed it up with spoons we had from getting gelato some time in West J. Maybe it was just because I was dying, but that snack was so incredibly good. Ah, I might have to try that again at home and see if it is really as good as I thought it was that day. I ate most of mine just straight, but then we started getting creative. Rachel had some pretzels, so we started putting the chocolate mix on the pretzels and ah, it was incredible! Chocolate covered pretzels – and so easy and convenient to make! I personally think our snack idea was brilliant, and it did its job, I was able to survive until dinner time. After dinner it was once again back to the books. It was an exhausting day and by about eight I was ready to go to bed. I got ready for bed, but then couldn't quite fall asleep and so I studied until ten and then finally was done studying for the day.

Sunday June 28th

2009-07-11T10:19:00.005-07:00

Our schedule is all messed up this week with it being finals. Sunday was mostly a free day, but then we had a field trip in the afternoon. I woke up and worked the rest of the kinks out of my schedule then studied some more for Judaism, ate lunch and got on the bike for a workout. The nice part about needing to bike so much is that it doesn't matter when I eat because I'm not bouncing up and down, so I can eat right before I bike, and drink as much as I want before I bike too. Oh, and as of this very day I started playing solitaire when I bike. It's great, I can just play it on my iPod and the time flies, but I'm actually getting a good workout in too. It is amazing how if you listen to a song with a fast beat your body changes your pace to match the beat of the song. Bodies are wonderful things! After biking I showered and got ready for our field trip. First we all met in the forum where Danny Seideman, a lawyer here who is way into politics and has even met with the President of the United States and stuff talked to us about the Palestine-Israeli conflict. He reminded me a lot of Papa. His skin was about the same color and he didn't have much hair, and was wearing an outfit I could totally see grandpa in. Some of his mannerisms even reminded me of Papa! Mr. Seideman was a very intelligent man and although he didn't tell us anything we hadn't learned in our other classes I was surprised at how much he cleared up things for me. He was very direct and just was great to listen to. He didn't talk long in the forum, but promised we would be hearing from him at every stop of the field trip.

Positive Outlook: After getting briefed we loaded the buses and then stopped at the Seven Arches Hotel Overlook. We actually came to this same lookout our very first field trip here, but this time it meant so much more. The first day I had no idea what I was looking at, but now I know what the valley below us was, what the cities surrounding us were and I could have even pointed out significant buildings if someone wanted me to. The main thing we could see from here was Jerusalem, the East part, the West part, and of course the Old City. At this stop Mr. Seideman talked about the positive outlook of the conflict. The Holy Land is considered holy by three religious groups – Muslims, Christians and Jews. Currently there are members of all three groups living and working in the Old City, and it has been that way for many years. The holy places are open to all people no matter what their background is. This gives us hope that although things are not running so smoothly other places, these people can live in peace together.

Not-So-Positive Outlook: Then we went to a portion of the separation wall. The wall is a huge concrete wall that has barbed wire coiled on top. The portion we saw is covered in graffiti making statements about the injustice of the wall. Here Mr. Seideman explained how and when the wall had been constructed and talked to us about the effects this had on the people involved. The separation was built so that Israel could better control the Palestinians and was originally built to protect the Israeli people. The wall was supposed to separate the Israelis from the Palestinians, but ended up cutting through some Palestinian neighborhoods. In order to get on the other side of the separation wall you must go to a check point where there are Israeli soldiers and they allow you to pass through if you have the proper documentation. Palestinians who used to walk five minutes to school now have to spend hours driving to a checkpoint, getting through, and then driving to the school. The wall has inconvenienced the people and has also caused other problems. In some cases Ambulances trying to get out of the West Bank to take patients to hospitals were not allowed through, or were held up so long that the critical patient did not make it to the hospital. Because of circumstances like these I think it will be hard to come to a peaceful solution because both sides feel like they have been wronged and that they deserve something from the other.

Final Stop: Our last stop was at an outlook where we could see a large main road. On this road was a barrier, this barrier blocked Palestinians from driving on certain roads. Roads like these that are blocked make it so Palestinians have to take longer routes to get to destinations that previously would have taken them much less time. Here Mr. Seideman talked to us some more about the conflict and just offered us some of his opinions on how peace can be reached. He then allowed us to ask questions. While we were there he got a call from someone at the United States Embassy and it just reinforced how legit this guy really was in my mind. This stop was actually right across the street from the Jerusalem Center, so when we were all done we walked back to the Center. I relaxed for a little bit and then it was dinner time! Right after dinner my Old Testament class met in Classroom #1 to divvy up the Study Guide Brother Masters had given us that morning. It actually got pretty heated in there – you see, the study guide was simply a list of terms. There were three columns on the front and back, meaning there were about 150 words. We had asked Brother Masters to come in and give us tips on studying and people started getting mad about how hard the test was going to be and someone legit asked if there was any possible way to do well, or succeed on this test. I just felt like laughing because of course the final for a college course will be hard, but it's not going to be impossible, and of course you will just do as well as you study, so if you want to do well study hard. That doesn't mean I agree with the way Brother Masters tests work, but I mean, come on, we are big kids, we can work hard for our grades, it is college, that is kind of the point. After splitting up the terms I had FHE in the Shekel Shack. We watched a movie about the widow of Zeraphath. After that we all just talked about what we thought and felt, and that was that. I blogged for a little bit after that, then studied a little bit more and called it a night.

Saturday June 27th

2009-07-11T10:19:00.003-07:00

Ashley came in first thing in the morning to find out what the deal was. I was the one who woke up when she came in, so I told her I had gotten in, and that I hadn't talked to Rach yet. Rach woke up and told us about her email. She is an alternate, there are between 1 and 3 alternates every semester, so she still could totally be in this semester, but she probably won't find out until school starts in the fall. You know, I have a hard time being really happy when I know Rachel is sad she didn't get in yet, but it's actually really impressive that out of only 3 alternates she is one of them. I hope she finds out sooner rather than later. After talking to Ash I went back to sleep and slept in as long as possible. I woke up with five minutes left in breakfast. I ran up and got there just in time. It's amazing how fast news travels, a lot of people at breakfast already knew all about the nursing emails from the night before. Church was great, Kristi sang I Need Thee Every Hour in sacrament meeting and we had a lot of great speakers. Sunday school was absolutely wonderful. We learned about a really cool concept. The topic was knowledge, and something I have never really thought about before we looked at in Moses 5:4-8 and in D&C 88:118. These scriptures talk about how obedience will bring illumination. This is such a neat thought. I know that the things we learn here on earth we will be able to take into the eternities, but I have never really thought about how we learn these things, besides just reading and learning from others and whatnot. Well in these scriptures it says if we have faith and do what the Lord commands then we will learn! It is after obedience that truth comes, and these truths bring understanding. Another cool thought is that knowledge is just information and date, but wisdom has a moral connotation. We can teach ourselves things of knowledge, but wisdom comes from God. Ah, I just loved that class today! After church I wrote some letters and got caught up on my Old Testament reading. I also finally emailed Sarah and Rachel and then Regan and I figured out our nursing schedules. Branch Prayer came next, and then the Travel Committee met at the Brown's. I thought it was a meeting to discuss Jordan or something, but it was actually a party! Apparently I am released from all my key passing out duties now. The Brown's were so cute, they fed us popcorn, watermelon, dried apricots and apple juice! It was a lot of fun, and the perfect night to do it since I'm always starving Sunday nights because dinner is so early. After that my roommates and I spread out on Trisha's bed and just talked and talked. Chadwick visited, and even brought popsicles – yum yum. Then Rachel pulled out the Granola and that topped off the night. I had a great day and was still just soaring from my excitement about nursing. After eating everything we had in the room we all went to bed-

Friday June 26th

2009-07-11T10:19:00.001-07:00

Back in the center again and trying to get ready for finals. Rachel and I decided to fast today that we would feel at peace with whatever happens with the nursing program, so I slept in through breakfast. Ashley was so cute, she brought us a note just saying good luck and she loved us no matter what, and it was just very nice and thoughtful of her. I spent the first part of my day compiling all my notes to start studying. I got on the bike for 45 minutes and no pain! I spent the 45 minutes studying for my Judaism test and then showered. Then I spent from about 1:30 until dinner at 6:00 pm working on my Judaism Final Review. I actually feel pretty good about the material, but I'm kind of nervous about the test still, I have a couple more days to study though. Dinner was especially good, and afterwards I started getting caught up on blogging from Jordan, it could be a while since I have so much studying to do in the next couple days. We have our Judaism and Islam final on Tuesday, and then Old Testament Thursday, and Arabic and our Field Trip course final on Friday. It's going to be a long week, but then after that classes will ease up a lot. Our nursing email was supposed to be coming at 2:00 am, so Rachel and Regan were trying to convince me to stay up so I would find out right when they sent the emails. Well, I wasn't planning on staying up, but they were watching 17 Again, so I caught the second half of that. Then we talked and then it was about midnight, so I decided I may as well stay up. I called my Mom and talked to her for an hour and it was so good just to talk. Then around 1:15 I decided to check and see if the email had come early. I opened my inbox to find two emails from Cara Wiley. I opened the first one and read:

Dear Student,
Congratulations!

I don't really recall what came after that. When I had opened my inbox I had seen that one email was concerning their decision and the other was titled concerning registration – which had made me think maybe I had gotten in, but I cannot describe how happy I was to read the email that said congratulations, you did it! Your hard work all paid off! I didn't scream with excitement, or get up and jump up and down, I just felt at peace and very content. Before applying I had kind of gotten nervous because I had always wanted to be a nurse but I had never consulted Heavenly Father about this choice. When I did consult him I didn't really get an answer. I worried about if nursing was really the right thing for me and if it was what Heavenly Father wanted to do. I finally just talked to my Heavenly Father and basically said, Heavenly Father, I have always wanted to be a nurse and I know you know that. I would love to pursue a career in nursing if you think that is right for me. If I get into the program I will know that you approve of this choice and I will try to become the best nurse I can be. If I don't get into the program than I will come to you and I know you will help me figure out how I can fulfill my potential. So essentially that email was an answer to my prayer, and that is why it brought so much joy and peace. I was just so happy and wanted to cry because I felt like this was Heavenly Father telling me that he approved of my choice. With my acceptance came the confidence that I will be able to be successful in the program and eventually become a nurse! I am just so glad I know what I am doing with my life, and I feel good about the direction my life is going. I was so thankful that I was able to have my parents on the phone when I read the email, that moment is one I will always be glad I got to share with them. They of course were happy for me and told me they knew I would get in the whole time – they have to say that, they're my parents, and boy do I love them! After hanging up from talking with my parents I gave Rachel a call (she was in our room) and told her the emails had come early and told her the good news. I then proceeded to call my Nana. She didn't answer, but Papa did and he passed me on to Nana. It was great to share the good news with her, I love and miss that wonderful woman a lot. It was nice talking to her and getting caught up on life. When I finally said goodbye to Nana I kneeled down to share my feeling of joy, peace and happiness with my Heavenly Father. I know he loves me and I love him. I am so thankful for his love and his spirit. I am thankful for prayer and I know that he not only hears our prayers, but answers them as well. I love my Heavenly Father and my Savior, even Jesus Christ. I am so thankful to be a member of this church and for the knowledge that comes along with that. I love life! I can't help thinking that Heavenly Father, Christ, and Brady are all up in heaven looking down on me and smiling – I love them all. When I had poured out my heart I walked downstairs and ran into Reagan who got in! She came up awkwardly with the question on her face, I just smiled and nodded and then she jumped on me. This is when I started getting all giddy and excited. We hugged and smiled and laughed, and then Trisha and Chadwick came and hugged and laughed with us and it was just a great moment. It was after two o'clock in the morning at this point and way past my bedtime. I had definitely reached that delirious point where everything is funny and you can't keep track of the conversation. I barely made it to my room, but when I did I found Rachel already asleep, so I followed suit.

Thursday June 25th

2009-07-11T10:18:00.003-07:00

Last day in Jordan . . .

Mosque: We visited the mosque in Amman which was absolutely beautiful. At this mosque we had to put on black robes that they provided, we looked like dementors from Harry Potter! Our heads had to be covered while we were there, so we were all floating around in these creepy looking black robe things and I felt like it was Halloween. We took off our shoes and went in the actual mosque. Our tour guide was Muslim and he brought his prayer rug and explained to us how their prayers work. The coolest part of the mosque was a digital clock they had on the wall that had a countdown for each prayer. It told you exactly how much time was left until the next prayer began. They pray five times a day, so I think that is a clever way to keep track of when you need to pray.

Amman Museum: This museum was so neat! It had the copper scrolls from the Dead Sea scrolls, we actually got to see them! The copper was bent in such a way that when they found the sea scrolls they couldn't unroll the copper scrolls, so what they did was cut it into smaller portions, take molds of those portions, and put it together on a flat piece. We got to see not only the smaller pieces all placed next to each other, but what the scrolls would have looked like all connected, what they contained. The museum had some neat stuff from Egypt and Jericho and of course Jordan, which was Moab in the bible times. One of my favorite things was some skeletons they found. Apparently they used to bury young children that died by putting their bodies in a big pot of sorts and then burying them in the floor of the home. Some of these bones were preserved because they were still in the pot and you could see this baby skeleton curled up. It just reminded me that not only did people live back then, but there were families and kids and the things we are studying were their reality. Wow, it is so incredible studying all these things! My very favorite artifact was a skull they found. It has several big holes in the top, some of which you can tell healed somewhat, and one which you can tell was very fresh. Archaeologists say this is evidence that they performed brain surgeries back then, and because the first couple heals had started healing, or had healed over they were therefore successful brain surgeries. I think that is so neat! Can you imagine people who don't even have running water performing brain surgeries? That's crazy – crazy cool!

Citadel Overlook: After exploring the museum to my heart's content we headed out to some more Roman ruins that were just a little ways down the road. Remember the story of King David and Bathsheba . . . well she was married to Uriah the Hittite, so after David realized that Bathsheba was pregnant because of him he sent for Uriah. When Uriah wouldn't lie with his life because he knew the rest of the men were out fighting and he thought that wouldn't be fair, David decided to send a note with Uriah for the captain, telling him to put Uriah at the front of the battle line in a place he would surely die. So basically Uriah carried his own death sentence back to the captain. The battle that Uriah died in was fought right around the area of these ruins and the museum – I love how the bible ties into everything here! The ruins weren't anything we hadn't seen in Jerash, but just helped us realize that Jerash wasn't' the only city, it was all over Jordan that the Romans built and lived at many years ago. These ruins also happened to be on a hill and from side of the hill you had a perfect view of a large amphitheater also dating back to Roman times. This one was even bigger than the one at Jerash, I'm amazed by the Romans building skills!

Bus Ride: Now this bus ride we passed some pretty neat stuff including the Roman amphitheater we had seen from the Citadel Overlook and – duh duh duh – the US Embassy! They told us before we drove by to put away our cameras and not take any pictures because if we did I guess the security would pull us over and take every single person in the buses camera and it would be bye bye camera forever! I guess they take security pretty seriously there.

Bethany Beyond Jordan Baptismal Site: Our last stop before crossing the border was the place they think Christ was baptized. This place was the hottest yet – approximately 120 degrees! When they opened the bus door you could just feel and smell the heat coming in. When I got off the bus it felt just the way it feels when you step out of the car for the first time after driving to Lake Powell. The air felt and smelled just like that, and I loved it. I didn't even mind the heat because it reminded me so much of Lake Powell. We walked down some pretty paths for a while and then got to this site where there was a concrete pool of sorts with a little bit of dirty water in it. I guess the river path has changed since Christ's time, but during bible times this was where the river flowed and the area they had built the little concrete pool in is where they believe Christ was baptized by John the Baptist. There our guide told us the baptism story and then said that a dove came down from heaven. Then he made a comment about how he didn't know the dove came down, our guess was as good as his. It was at that moment that I realized how unique and special it is that we grow up in a church where we are able to learn the basics of the church in primary and by the time we are eight years old we understand why Christ was baptized and why we are baptized. We also understand that a dove ascended from heaven representing the Holy Ghost, because baptism needs to be not only by water, but by fire, by the Holy Ghost. We then proceeded to where the Jordan River is running today. Along the way we saw several churches, all built to commemorate Christ's baptism. At the river we were able to get our feet in. We weren't supposed to go more than halfway across the river because on the other side is a different country and you can get in big dodo for crossing! As in detainment for the rest of your life! Luckily no one in our group even bothered, I only got my feet in – the water was so dirty, but Lisa and Dan both got all the way in, they are crazy! Then all 80 of us sat together in the shade and sang every hymn and primary song we knew by heart that had to do with baptism. This included Baptism, Come Follow Me, I Like to Look for Rainbows, and Lord I Would Follow Thee. The spirit there was very special and once again I was just grateful I was able to grow up in the church and learn so much in my youth, and I am even more grateful that I am able to continuing learning each and every day. Brother Masters and Brother Huff then gave us a little thought each and then we headed back to the buses. On the walk back I talked to Lydia, who was actually able to be baptized in the Jordan River. I asked about her baptism experience and as she talked she gasped and started crying. After a minute she explained that just barely things she had not remembered a couple minutes ago had been brought to her remembrance. I was so glad to be able to talk to her about her baptism experience and her testimony shined through. We talked about all the neat experiences we are having and how the human mind is not sufficient to remember it all perfectly, but our Heavenly Father will help bring those important things he wants us to learn from to our remembrance later in life. I know I've already forgotten so much of what has happened here, but I know years from now Heavenly Father will help me remember the things I need to know, especially the lessons and experiences he knows can benefit not only myself but others. I am so thankful for my Heavenly Father!

Home Sweet Home: After that we got back on the bus, went on the King Hussein Bridge and went through the border crossing again. We had to wait on the bus for a while, but when we got off we got to go right through, so it was well worth the wait. I can't believe the next time I have a border crossing experience it will be because I am going back to the United States! After a short bus ride we got home and I checked my email just in case they sent the nursing emails early – don't worry, they didn't. Then it was dinner, get a bike workout in and shower. I then ate dinner and did some homework so I would be ready for finals the next week. My roommates and I all filled out our field trip manuals and watched Confession of a Shopaholic, which was actually a really cute movie. Then I ended up staying up talking with Trish and Rachel forever – I love my roommates, we get along so well and jut have a great time together. Then it was off to bed -

Wednesday June 24th

2009-07-11T10:18:00.001-07:00

Another long day in Jordan, I really started getting worn out by this point! That morning I was getting ready and decided to go wash off my shoes in the shower. Well, I washed off one and then grabbed the other. When I turned the water back on it started coming out of the showerhead instead of the lower faucet, and it went right on me in my clothes! I must have accidentally hit the flip thing changing where the water came from, it made for a pretty funny experience though. I was just glad I had plenty of time to dry out my clothes before we had to go running around for the day. So this hotel we were staying in was totally ghetto. To add to the dirty water in the showers, the elevators are something out of an old movie. They don't even call them elevators in fact, they call them lifts. You push the button and then push through the door (yeah, it's a door like the one in front of our pantry) and then you go into the elevator. When you push a button this metallic silver door closes super fast and you feel like you just got stuck in a secret trap the hotel set for you. On the walls of the elevator there is some great metallic silver wallpaper chipping all over that matches the crazy closing door, it all looks really classy together. Then when you get to the floor you wanted to get to this door slides open and you feel like you need to run out through the push door before you get caught in the metallic trap again. Anyway, as you can tell I rather enjoyed the elevator experience, I would crack up every time and don't worry, I caught it all on film so the people back home can enjoy these incredible lifts with me. After escaping from the elevator we headed out for Jerash!

Jerash: This is one of the best preserved Roman cities in the world! In the Bible it was known as Gerasa and is one of the Decapolis cities of the Roman Empire and was right along the King's Highway. Because of its position it was able to prosper by taxing the northward flow of Arabian goods and Nabataean ware. At this site we saw all sorts of typical Roman ruins, including a forum-like oval plaza, a north-south cardo (main road), two east-west cross streets, two theatres, a hippodrome (gladiator stadium) a triumphal gate, a nymphaeum (fountain), and temples. As you walk down a Roman road there are columns on both sides. You can tell when you are getting to an important building because the columns are taller in front of that building. My favorite thing was probably the amphitheater thing. The seats are arranged in a half circle, for auditory and visual purposes. This curving bench left an empty space at the bottom, and then behind that was a big stage. When we went our tour guide stood in the middle of the lower empty space at the front, which is supposed to be a place where the entire group could hear the speaker from, and we could hear him without a problem, which I thought was really cool considering that the place could hold thousands! There were these half circles carved into the walls at the bottom of the seats and if you had a friend go to the one on the opposite side you could whisper and hear each other because the sound would travel to the other side! It was so fun – like an old Roman telephone! Some guys dressed up in kilts came in and started playing Amazing Grace with bagpipes and drums and the sound was almost deafening! It was kind of funny because we told them to keep playing, but I don't think they knew any other songs because they just kept playing Amazing Grace over and over again. This amphitheater was our last stop with the tour guide and then we had free time. A bunch of talented singers from our group up and started trying out the acoustics. Then some more of the students got up and started dancing, and then we saw a battle reenactment in slow motion from some of them! I was pooped and content to sit in the shade and watch, but I was totally cracking up! It was a lot of fun, and we ended off the whole thing with some fantastic jumping shots, so that always makes things even better! After seeing a little bit of everything we went to the museum, which was kind of dumpy. It did have a couple unique things, but most of it was pretty lame. The thing I did like about the museum was the office at the front with a fan. I sat in there and listened to a little music on my iPod and for the first time that day didn't feel like I was melting. Jordan is really hot, way hotter than Israel and even hotter than Egypt! It was about 110 degrees, and I am definitely not used to that and was quite warm the majority of our time there.

Lunch: Once again we had an incredible lunch at an incredible restaurant with incredible pita and humus. This one was called the Green Valley Restaurant. I'm sensing a trend here, all the restaurants serve pita and humus and then once you eat so much you think you can't eat any more they bring out meat and French fries. They serve the humus and other veggies and dips on small plates they spread all over the table and usually bring the pitas in baskets. Then they walk around with big trays of the meat and French fries and dish a ton onto your plate. Desert usually consists of watermelon – so yummy, but I didn't want to eat in Jordan because I didn't want to risk getting sick.

Bus Ride & Jabbok River: After that we loaded the buses and went on another long bus ride, this time we were going to Amman. On the way we stopped at a place where we could see the Jabbok River, which connects to the Jordan River. It splits the Jordanian Plateau into northern and southern regions and is a natural border that used to divide the Kingdom of Sihon the Amorite from the Kingdom of Og of Bashan. Moses was able to conquer from Arnon unto Jabbok, which would be the modern day territory of Sihon, and gave that territory to the tribes of Reuben and Gad. In Roman times the river divided two Decapolis cities, Philadelphia and Gerasa, which is modern day Amman and Jerash. It was above this river, at a site called Penuel (approximately where we stopped) that Jacob wrestled with an angel and had his named changed to Israel. This bus ride I was also alone, I don't know how much fun it is sitting alone every time- hmm. I am in love with Diana Krall and solitaire though, they helped me through pretty much every bus ride in Jordan though and will definitely not be forgotten when I get back to Israel.

Branch House: Next we went to the branch meeting house. It actually is not a church because The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not recognized as an official religion over here and so we cannot have official churches. At the branch house President Robert Hoffman spoke to us and was a great speaker. He talked about opportunities in his youth that had prepared him to be a branch president in Jordan and encouraged us all to talk to Heavenly Father in all our decisions so we will be prepared to do the work the Lord has prepared for us. He also explained that although we are not able to do missionary work in these countries we still are preparing the way for a time when missionaries will be able to teach and we can be examples. The "Mormons" have a really good reputation over here because of the Saints that have visited, so when missionaries come to these places people will be more willing to open their doors because they will have already had positive experiences with Mormons. President Hoffman was just so fun to listen to, he had so many great stories and was really easy to relate too. After he spoke we did a mini question and answer session and I learned so much. They currently have an older couple serving a mission in Amman, but they are not allowed to proselyte. So what happens is people have to seek out them and go to the branch meeting house and then, and only then are they able to teach them. It makes me sad that we can't yet share the gospel here, but I am very grateful there are missionaries serving in Jordan who are able to set a good example and create positive relationships for the church in Jordan.

Dinner and Amman at Night: Dinner was once again amazing, I'm stuck on spring rolls and that night they even had mini BBQ pizza which I was in love with! They were like bagel bites but bigger and flatter and a little different! That night Callie, Alyssa, Rachel and I went out on the town and decided to go to a movie shop. They have a movie shop here called Friends where you can buy every single movie for 1 Dinar, which is about $1.42. We went and grabbed some movies, they even had ones that are still in theaters. I didn't get very many because A they weren't the best quality, B I wasn't really sure what to get, and C I figured my Dad would probably just rent them at one time or another if we really wanted to see them, my family doesn't really buy movies much, and D, I know this is silly, but they weren't edited. After getting the movies we walked back to the hotel and put them in our rooms. The other girls I was with had missed dinner, so when they told the staff the cook immediately started whipping up food just for them! They brought out huge plates of food and desert. I had eaten, so I just sat by, but I can't believe how nice those hotel people were. The sad part was none of the girls are big eaters, so they barely even broke into the amount of food the waiter brought out, and they spent more time trying to move their food around so it looked like they ate than they spent actually eating. After that we headed back out and just started exploring Amman a little bit. There sure wasn't much to see and it felt pretty sketch since we didn't see another woman out all night. Several times we had guys make catcalls and one guy even started following us, so we just turned into a store until he passed. I was ready to go back to the hotel and call it a night after that, but Rachel and Callie did not want to do that so much. We ended up finding a gelato place and Callie and Rachel decided to flirt with the guy to see how much extra gelato they could get – sometimes they make me a little nervous. The good news is they got extra ice cream, the bad news is that the guy really liked talking to them and after all the customers were served came out by where we were eating to talk a little more. Luckily he didn't speak English very well and after struggling to understand us for a little just ended up going back inside which Alyssa and I were more than pleased about. We stayed at the gelato place and talked for a while, the temperature outside was perfect! There was a little breeze, but the air was warm and it really felt like summer to me. Then we headed back to the hotel and I am really glad we did because I did not feel very safe! We made it home safe and sound and I jumped in the shower, settled down and watched Hitch and went to bed!

Tuesday June 23rd

2009-07-07T11:14:00.001-07:00

I woke up and was under the impression that we had to be at breakfast at 6:00 am sharp. Well, I was there, right on time, and I was the only one. Oh, but don't worry, a couple minutes later all the teachers showed up and sat with me, so then it was me and the teachers. It was actually a good breakfast, good company. An hour or so later we took a walk down the street and what do we see . . . PETRA!

Petra: Petra happens to be the world's second World Wonder! So pretty legit, but I wasn't all too familiar with it. It is in the Seir Range and overlooks the Rift Valley, aka Arava. When we walked in there was the main entrance way, which is apparently one of the most famous sites, but I didn't really recognize it. This place looked like Lake Powell to me, minus the water. There were these big canyons, red rock all over the place and it was just beautiful. These gulleys were actually created by rain erosion I came to find out. The people who used to live here were the Horites, but by the time of the Exodus they became integrated with the Edomites. By 400 BC the Nabataeans arrived in Petra and displaced the older Edomite inhabitants who moved to the Negev and became the Idumaeans. Then during Roman times General Pompey made a Nabataea client state and so the Nabataean king created Roman facilities. As a result of all these different groups with all these different influences there were different things from all different time periods throughout the gulleys, like at one point there was two camels carved into the wall most likely representing the Edomites, and at another point was a couple squares that were supposed to represent one of the Nabateans deities. Our tour guide kept pointing out different evidences showing the groups who had previously inhabited Petra. There was one part in the canyon where there was an enormous rock piece still attached to the wall, but it was cracked the majority of the way down and looked like it was about to fall right down! They said it's been that way forever though, always just about to fall.

Treasury: After going through the canyon for a while we came to an opening and we saw the Treasury! This was made famous by the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It is totally cool, it is a building carved into a cliff face. You can see little holes etched into the wall that they used as part of a ladder system. We couldn't go inside, but looking it was pretty cool, I still just can't believe they really carved that out of rock with chisels and whatnot, they didn't have power tools when the Nabateans were there.

Tombs: After that there was another little passage through more canyons and then it really opened up. We followed a dirt road and part of a road that is left from the Romans. From the road our guide pointed out the mountain that Aaron died on! Yeah, Aaron as in Moses' brother Aaron. We could also see what they call The High Place. Up on top of the mountain they used to sacrifice to their gods in this high place. On one side of the canyon was a bunch of holes cut out of the rock wall. They were all tombs! On the other side of the canyon was several very large tombs, these are known as the King's tombs and these are the tombs of royalty. They are a lot more elaborate than the other tombs, which were just straight up holes. These tombs had pillars carved into them and decoration. The side of the canyon with the King's tombs had some beautiful colors in the rock. There were purples and blues all swirled and it looked incredible! Oh, and next to the mountain Aaron died on was more red rock, and part of it looked just like a camel – it had the head, the neck and the hump of course.

Monastery: After that the tour guide let us go free, so we started hiking around. He had told us about the Monastery up in the mountains, so Mason, Chadwick and I started hiking up. I cannot tell you how badly I wished at that point I was hiking in a swimsuit, it really felt just like a Lake Powell hike, and it was so hot! When we got to the monastery, I was simply amazed. The treasury had been carved out of a cliff face, so they had just carved right in, but this monastery had been cut out of the mountainside. They had to cut into the mountain until they had enough height to start carving the monastery. It was bigger and much more elaborate than treasury too.

The View at the End of the World: After the monastery we kept hiking up and there was this sign with an arrow, it said "View at the End of the World". That sounded interesting enough, so we hiked up. Along the path were about a zillion rock piles all different sizes and heights. From the viewpoint all you could see was desert and desert, and then it looked like the world just ended. You could not see any civilized anything, just wasteland. While up there we found some holes in the rock, and you could sit in them! So it looked like you were sitting in a high chair, or just like half your body was buried in rock, like the sand pictures where you bury yourselves but with rock. We climbed in one and through one and it was actually a lot of fun. Then inspired by other rock piles we decided to make our own, and of course since we were making the effort anyway decided that we needed to outdo all the other rock piles already there, and we did! Ours was huge and had pillars and was just a lot of fun to make. You know making a rock pile is intense when you have four guys having to carry one rock you are adding to your rock pile, yeah, it was that intense. Once we had it pretty high it looked like it was a sacrificial altar or something, so we sacrificed someone on it and continued on building up. That's when the pillars came, but I must admit that our rock pile was not very stable and made me a little nervous. We all signed our initials, and left it at that. Hopefully it lasts a while, how cool would it be if someone who goes to BYU Jerusalem next year saw it. After leaving our mark in Petra we started hiking back down the mountain.

Hiking down and Lunch: While hiking down we saw the monastery again, but at this point there was some Bedouin guy climbing up to the top! There were stairs going up, and all I wanted to do at that point was follow the Bedouin up to the top of the monastery, that right there would have been epic. Well, we started yelling at Brother Huff to ask permission. He couldn't hear us, so I told the guys I would go ask him. So I started running closer but then saw a lizard and realized Brother Huff was on a mountain and I wouldn't really be able to get to him. I decided to stop going for Brother Huff and instead go for the lizard. To this day Mason and Chadwick will never let me live that down. Every day they say something along the lines of "I'm going to go get Brother Huff – oh look, a lizard" and start cracking up, I guess it is kind of earned though. When we finally did get Brother Huff's attention he said no way. I guess besides it being illegal, a BYU student climbed up there some years ago and carved BYU on the back of the urn, defacing a world wonder is not exactly something you want to be famous for. So once we realized he really wasn't going to let us go we hiked down to lunch. It was delicious of course, we totally get spoiled rotten here.

Churches and Bedouin Ruins: After lunch we went and checked out a Byzantine church. It had some of the cool tile we'd seen at the other places and some other ruins around them. A little up from that was a churchish thing with 4 blue pillars. They were made of blue granite from Egypt and apparently it used to be some kind of military complex. Further up from that was what I guess used to be where the Bedouin people would live. Now they have been kicked out and a housing district was built for them right outside of Petra so they wouldn't be living actually on the world wonder. They have one road and it leads them to the base of the monastery hike, how cool would that be to have your only road take you to Petra? I know, legit right. Well these Bedouin ruins were fun to mess around on. We crawled in some holes, they were all dead ends. Then we looked around for ancient Roman coins, Brother Huff told us we might be able to find one and of course Mason looked down and found one right away – the lucky duck. I never found one, but that's ok.

Backtracking: Next we started heading back, but explored along the way. We went up by the King's tombs and climbed through a bunch of them. It was so cool, the rock was seriously beautiful. The colors were so bright and all the tombs were just so neat. It was really cool walking through them. Brother Huff was leading the way, and at a fast pace, so we went through pretty quickly. We were trying to rush so we could make it to everything we wanted to see. After seeing the king's tombs we started hiking up to The High Place. Wow, it was such a cool altar, but quite a hike. I can't believe they hiked up all that way every time they wanted to offer a sacrifice. The view from up there was great, we could see all the places we had been running around exploring in a whole new light. After that it was time to start heading back. I walked back with Chadwick and we just had a good old chat. It was kind of weird seeing everything we'd already seen, but in the opposite order, I felt like we were rewinding on the day. At one point there were horses and you could ride them up to the entrance. The program had given us $3 to take a horse and to tip afterwards, but I decided I would rather walk and buy some cold water and a popsicle than ride a horse by this time of day, I wasn't sure I had the energy to climb up on one and didn't think I would be very comfortable up there either. Let me tell you, that popsicle was incredible, probably the very best one I have had in all my time here, but that could've been just because I was so hot though.

The End: We had a long bus ride – and I somehow was able to snag my own seat again, that can make a bus ride almost heavenly. Eventually we got to our destination, checked into the Ambassador Hotel and then I passed the room keys out as a part of my travel duties, and then we got some dinner! It was really good, I've found I am a definite fan of spring rolls, oh, I could have eaten all of them. After dinner some people were going out on the town, but my leg kind of hurt, so I decided aimlessly walking around wasn't the best option. So instead I showered and that in itself was enough excitement for one night. I turned on the warm water and brown ickiness started gushing out at me. I honestly don't think that water was sanitary. The bright side is if I turned the water on as cold as it could go without being turned off, I got clear water- ha ha, and I've really learned to appreciate modern conveniences that function consistently! After my shower I watched a movie and stretched and it was beautiful. I felt relaxed and got to go to bed early, which was probably exactly what I needed.

Monday June 22nd

2009-07-07T11:12:00.001-07:00

Early morning because we left for JORDAN! I ended up with my own seat, which I loved because I could spread out and sleep, and then we took off and headed for the border. I must say, I am really starting to detest these crossing the border experiences - luckily there are not many more. It was relatively smooth and uneventful, I did manage to get a new stamp in my passport though, so that was exciting. Oh, I almost forgot, when I went to the restroom I found a nice little surprise . . . a Turkish toilet! For those of you who don’t know what that it is, it is basically a glorified hole in the ground. The porcelain may make it look a little nicer, but it is still not a fun experience. After we had used those fun Turkish toilets to our content we took off for some real adventures:

Mt. Nebo: This is the place Moses was ten to view the Holy Land and this is where many believe Moses died, but we know from Joseph Smith Translations that this is the mountain on which he was translated. From this view point that you could see Jericho, the Dead Sea, and much more. There was a cool tree that people had tied white pieces of cloth on. I guess that they believe that Mt. Nebo is a site of healing, so people who want to be healed come and tie a white cloth on the tree. The most common thing people come to get help with is not being able to have children. The other thing at this site was mosaics that date from the byzantine time period. They are put together as much as they can be and you can see cool designs and unique animals. Oh, and the very most exciting thing at Mt. Nebo was also the bathrooms – I’m sensing a trend. In the girls bathroom they just happened to have 8 urinals! Don’t ask me why! I was talking to one of the guys after and he said that there weren’t any in the boy’s bathroom, hmm.

Madaba: Madaba is right along the King’s Highway and is the last stop before Amman. It has a small town feel, the streets were so small the buses couldn’t even take us to the church we were trying to get to. I didn’t mind though because then I got to see some of the town, and in that short walk I decided that Jordan is much cleaner and nicer than Egypt. We went into the St. George Monastery which was nestled right in the middle of the town. Inside is a large mosaic map on the floor. One portion shows the Holy Land, another shows Jerusalem, and the final portion shows the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and Jericho. Historians and Archaeologists actually used this map to help them reconstruct the Byzantine Near East. It was in a beautiful monastery, with a lot of other cool mosaic pictures, but those were much more modern.
Lunch: We ate at another incredible restaurant. It was outside, but had a big pavilion built of sticks and leaves and whatnot and you kind of got the feeling that you were in a jungle or something. Within minutes of us sitting down they brought out plates of pitas and humus and veggies. We were told to be careful with the water and anything not cooked, so I resisted the temptation to eat the fresh veggies. Their pita was the most amazing pita I have ever had – good thing too because unfortunately the main course was kind of gross. After lunch we got on the bus and had a two hour drive and I was out!

Shabok Castle: We went to a real crusaders castle! I felt just like a princess, except for the fact that we had to hike down a huge hill to get down to where the moat was, and then up a huge winding hill to get to the entrance. Once there we stormed the castle – I seriously was running around trying to see everything. It was cool to see all these rooms and tunnels, a lot of them you couldn’t really get into because of the rocks piled up in them from the top of the castle starting to fall down. That castle really was up on a mountain, I don’t know how anybody would be able to successfully overtake a fortress like that, and I don’t know how anybody is crazy enough to try! It was really fun to explore, we didn’t get very much time there, so all 80 of us (including the teachers) ended up being late to the bus –oops.

Bus & Hotel: Another bus ride, and one more stop. This stop was an overlook where we could see a five star hotel. That doesn’t seem like anything special, but it used to be ancient ruins and now it is renovated into a hotel, so that makes it more legit. Our last stop was the Petra Palace Hotel. This trip my roommate is Callie, it’ll be fun to get to know her. After being spoiled in Egypt with such nice hotels these once didn’t seem like as much fun. Once again I have a toilet story. The toilet in our hotel room seemed to be functioning pretty normal, I went ahead and used it no problem. Callie was next, and problem, it wouldn’t flush. Well, we went down to dinner and when we got back it flushed! Good, but then the story repeats. I use it, no problem, Callie uses it, problem. I guess it just takes about an hour for it to “reload” in between flushes so it is flushable again.

Jordan Night Scene: We saw the Jordan night scene, all in under 20 minutes. We walked down the street and we saw some store shops, and at the end of the road was Petra! Oh, and about ten Indiana Jones shops right outside Petra too. It was actually only the Petra Visitors Center, we couldn’t go inside because it was closed. So we just looked at the ghetto shops, and then went on back to the hotel. That was our exciting first night in Jordan, and then it was bed because we had an early start the next morning-

Sunday June 21st

2009-06-26T14:43:00.001-07:00

Free day, we slept in a little and left after breakfast for the Old City.

Ethiopian Service: First we went to the Holy Sepulcher where we saw an Ethiopian church service. I borrowed Rachel's camelback and by the time we got to the service my bottom was dripping wet! At that point I finally decided to take it out and check for a leak, and don't worry about it, the bottom part was just practically undone. I didn't mind the wet too much though, it actually kind of had a cooling effect. The Ethiopian service was very interesting. I didn't understand a word, but the music was beautiful, I love the language they were speaking. All the men stood at the front, barefoot and praying. All the women stood at the very back, and switched off between standing and kneeling for praying. It was fun to see, but we didn't stay too long. After that we went to Shabon's and just walked around the Old City.

Me with a wet bottom from my camelback!

Me and Stephanie Lacey in our new headbands we got in the Old City -

Ayman Jebara: At ten we met up with our Arabic professor, Ayman Jebara, at Damascus gate. We then went to Lina Café, which is the favorite Humus spot for Hebrew University students. We went up onto the second floor and all got ½ a bowl of Humus, and let me tell you, that stuff is filling! I couldn't even come close to finishing my bowl. This experience taught me that I am not the biggest fan of humus, but this was actually the best humus I've ever had (the JC can't compete with the real stuff). They brought out pitas and then random veggies to eat with the humus. I decided to try all the veggies, even the raw onion. Well, I got to the pepper, and I've had green pepper plain before, and it's not bad, so I went for it. I guess this was a bell pepper! I bit into, and spit it right back out, but my lips were literally burning for hours and tears started running down my face, my nose was running, my eyes were ready, and my mouth was hot! I tried to make it better by gulping down all the water in my camelback, but I think that made it worse. Then I tried to use the pita and hummus to cool down my mouth, which helped a little more than the water, but still my mouth was dying. It was actually pretty funny, only one other person tried the bell pepper and it was Brad. After we left Lina he told me he was glad I took a bite of the pepper so he had someone who would understand to share the experience with. Maybe this is heartless, but I wish I wouldn't have been able to relate, I guess I did learn never to trust peppers unless I know exactly what kind they are! After Humus we went to another restaurant in the old city for Kanaffee. Let me describe this very Middle Eastern dessert . . . mozzarella cheese with a strange kind of wheat on top that has been crystallized or caramelized, with crushed pistachios on top. It did not look good at all to me, but since my teacher was right there, and I had the opportunity, I gave it a try, and it actually was pretty good, very sweet tasting, surprisingly so. We tried to pay Ayman for all of our treats, but he wouldn't let us! He paid for humus and kanaffee for all of us! He is way too nice and generous. I attribute it to the culture – he told us that according to their culture, if you are rich it is because God favors you, so you need to take advantage of the money and show God that you appreciate it by using it, and "showing off and having a lot of nice things" (his words, not mine).

Humus! Yum yum -

The one and only Ayman Jebara!

My table at the Lina restauraunt in the Old City

Me and Jessica eating our Kanaffee

My table in the Kanaffee restaurant, notice Ayman's hand. . .

Jewish Quarter: After saying thank you and goodbye to Ayman we went to the Jewish quarter of the Old city, it was a part I had never been to before. It was a very modernized portion of the Old city (ironic, I know) and was clean and bright and beautiful. We went and saw the life-sized Menorah first. It is in an open area and is covered by a huge glass thing that resembles the glass case that covers the rose in Beauty and the Beast. After that we went to the 3^rd Temple Museum. It is not actually a Museum, but they make you pay all the same. There is an organization that has already started preparing for when the 3^rd and final temple will be built on the Temple Mount. They have made the priestly garments already, the breastplates, and a bunch of the things needed to perform ordinances in the temple. There was a tour group coming in half hour, so we decided to wait and go through the museum with them so we could get more out of it. Well, most of the group decided to nap in the waiting room, but Rachel and I thought that was kind of boring. We decided instead to set a world record and try and make it all the way to Shabon's and back before the tour group came to exchange money for Jordan, and we ran a couple other errands on the way. Well, we did it, we made it back just as the tour group was starting. My favorite thing we learned about was the breastplate. It has 12 stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel, but the cool part is that there is a portion that folds back, called the Urim and Thumim they say is has special powers, such as assisting in translation and stuff. I know what you are thinking – Urim and Thumim – just like in the Book of Mormon! So cool, I know! It's was a very interesting museum, I really liked the attitude of the Jews working there. You see, the Temple Mount is a very controversial place, and currently the Dome of the Rock is on the land where they believe the 3^rd and final temple will be built. Of course someone asked how they were planning on building a temple there with the Dome there. The Jewish tour guide responded that they believe that when the Messiah comes everybody on the earth will realize how important it is to build a temple and it is only when everybody comes to that realization that they will build the temple, they have no intention to try and kick the Muslims off the temple mount. Anyway, it was a great museum and I learned a lot.

Palestinian House: As soon as we got back from the Old City I started talking to some girls who were going to visit one of the ladies they had met at one of the forums, it was the one where there were three Palestinians who had attended school in Israel and at BYU Provo. We took a taxi over to their house and ahhh- had a blast! When we got there they lead us into this huge room with couches all over the place. It was the coolest room. We asked them about it and they said it was their place to host guests. We just sat and talked to them about life, and I can't believe I was just sitting with a Muslim family talking like it was nothing. Sorry, I'm sure I'm spelling all of these wrong, but Hadill was the one who the girls I was with had met at the forum. She had her son Hamdi with her, who was 9 months and adorable! The other woman we spent most the night talking to was Hannadi. She went to Hebrew University and is a journalist. I think it is so cool here that all the woman go to university and work, but also that when the time comes they give it all up to be a mother. Hadill is a pharmacist, but is currently staying home with her little boy. After sitting for a while they brought out a bunch of food and we ate it right in the welcome room. They had the best guacamole I have ever had and these amazing chips. They had a really yummy salad that was chopped up tiny, and then the main course. It was these yummy tortilla things with chicken and almonds inside, it was so yummy! We told them we definitely needed the recipe. They served all this food with coke, and I'm not a huge soda fan, and coke just isn't real great either, but I was stuck because I didn't want to be rude. So, I ended up drinking quite a bit of it, and then after we were all done eating they brought out water – drat. It was such a great dinner though, they were so kind to feed us too. Then they brought out real ice cream! It was so good – I'm not sure what was in it, but I loved it! They were way too good to us. After the meal Hannadi's little sister who is graduating from high school this year got home and joined the fun. She was telling us all about school, and I guess here you decide after your junior year if you want to go into the Sciences or English and in college you study one of the two. This girl said she loves History, but the only job you can do with that is teach, so she wants to go into the Sciences and perhaps be a surgeon, how cool is that! It was fun talking to someone so close to us in age. She asked each of us what we were studying and Kellyn used to be a music major, and so on the spot they asked her to sing. Well, she cleared her throat and sang for them. I thought it was neat that they felt comfortable asking and that Kellyn was so cool and willing to share her talent. She sang a song from the Scarlet Pimpernel. Later Hadill took us upstairs and showed us her apartment. The place is incredible! The main floor has a kitchen and the welcome room and then on each floor above that is two apartments. In each apartment a different member of the family lives. Fatti is the oldest brother, he is married with two kids. Then comes Feros, who is married to Hadill, and then Hannadi, and Shaddi is the youngest boy. Their parents also live in one of the apartments. How fun would that be though to live in one big house, it would be like us living with Pearce's and Abbott's and Conger's, all in one big house just in different apartments. That's my favorite part about the people here, is how much they value family, I think it is wonderful. Hadill's apartment was adorable though, she has such great taste and she put the rooms together in such a cute way. Her little boys room was decorated Winnie the Pooh style and it was just so cute! After a mini tour we went outside to their veranda kind of thing. They just had a bunch of tables and chairs to sit in the shade in. When we were inside the women had their heads uncovered because they were in their own home and not around any boys, but when we went out to the front yard they covered their heads. I admire their beliefs and how they put religion at the top of their priority list and how they work life around their religion, not the other way around. We looked at Hadill's wedding pictures and it was so interesting to see a Muslim wedding. She had this beautiful white silk thing she covered her head with whenever she was with men, but then part of the wedding just girls are at, and she had this fancy hair style and tons of make-up and looked really good. The dresses of the women were very different than I was expecting. They had low cut dresses, and spaghetti straps and whatnot, they just have to be covered when they are in the presence of men. You don't have to cover your head in front of your husband, brothers, father, or father-in-law, but besides that you must be covered and modestly dressed. Feros picked up dessert for us on the way home from work and it was kanaffee! New record – never before, yet kanaffee twice in one day now. They were so hospitable and nice and I had a great time. We want to make cookies and write a thank you note and take them over when we get back from Jordan.

The Center: After that it was home and video chat with my family! That's right – it only took a million years for us to figure out how to make it so we could both see and hear each other at the same time, but eventually it did work. I was so glad to see and hear from my family, I love them! We talked until my computer battery died- I wish we could have talked longer. After that I went to the poetry slam going on in the Shekel Shack. It was pretty fun, people brought poems they had written, or just poems they enjoyed and dressed in black and read them in front of everybody. There were some pretty funny ones, I like the ones talking about Jerusalem and our experiences here. I didn't stay too long because I had to get a work-out in. I started running laps around the center, but my stinkin leg started hurting and so after a mile I stopped and stretched it. Luckily Aubrey is here, she is in the athletic training program at BYU and was willing to give me a massage. She said my leg felt like I had a hard rope in it – not so good. I had bought gummies in Old City that morning specifically for Aubrey because she is always so nice about massaging me. This is the second time she has given me a leg rub-out, and she's also given me a couple back massages. You can get so many gummies for so cheap here, they are everywhere in the Old City. They sure taste good but I'm not sure how sanitary they are. After Aubrey had worked her magic I packed for Jordan and iced my leg, and then called my mom about my leg. I told her exactly what was up and she suggested I call good old D-Train, so I did. He was so patient and supportive. He told me to take a couple days off and then start slowly working back again. He said to make sure to keep icing it and stretching it and just to be careful. After that I fell exhausted into bed, knowing I'd only be getting a couple hours in before we had to leave for Jordan.

Saturday June 20th

2009-06-21T09:24:00.001-07:00

Trisha Marie Zemp's birthday! Hooray! Since we stayed up so late the night before we slept in, which was quite enjoyable. Then I got breakfast and got ready. Since we had just watched the Notebook I decided I wanted to attempt to do my hair like Ali does, with the cute twists and whatnot, so I did it. I decided Jerusalem is a great place to try new hair styles because it doesn't matter if it looks horrible, but I actually liked it a lot and you may be seeing me pull the 1920's hair styles more often. I borrowed a white pencil skirt from Kristi for church, and I am in love. I so want to shop for one when I get home! Sacrament was great, Karen sang I Know That My Redeemer Lives while Kirstin Boyd accompanied and it was beautiful. The speakers spoke on fathers and the one that touched me the most talked about the reception we will receive from our earthly father when we get home from this trip. I will probably cry when I finally get to say my family and tell them how much I missed them and how much I love them. Think of the reception we will receive from our father in heaven when we get home. Hopefully we will feel similar, and be able to say Heavenly Father, I love you and I missed you so much and although that was great, I'm so glad to be home. I can't wait to see my earthly family and I cannot wait to see my Heavenly Father and I know in both cases I want to be able to say that I made them proud while I was gone and accomplished what they would have liked me to accomplish. During Sunday school and Relief Society I was a very naughty girl. For Trish's birthday we decided to clean our room (it was a disaster) and then heart attack her area of the room. I spent Sunday School cleaning and cutting out hearts and then writing all over them, and then during Relief Society me and Rach fixed the fort up for Trish and heart attacked all over it. When she came in she was so excited and happy, I hope that we made her birthday a little better. It was a lot of fun doing something like that for her and I am glad I had the opportunity to do something nice for such a wonderful roommate. After that I spent the day emailing family and friends, mostly Sarah and Rachel. I also got caught up on journal and blogging. The stinky part was that when I went to go send the emails I lost my internet connection and all the emails I had been working on didn't go through – stinky! I was kind of frustrated just because I had spent so much time trying to write nice thoughtful emails, I'm going to try and write my friends again in the next couple days though. After dinner I video chatted with Aubrey and got it all figured out so I can video chat with my family tomorrow night – I can hardly wait to see their faces again! Then I joined some people who had just started The Notebook and watched the beginning with them, but then decided that it was absolutely ridiculous to watch the whole thing since I had just watched it the day before. So I went up to the library, picked up Pollyanna, and then filled up a bath and read and it felt absolutely wonderful! It made me very happy. After that was branch prayer. I had sneeched on Elise, but since she is engaged I decided to call her fiancé and ask him a couple questions, and then after they guessed who the girl was I had Elise come up and asked her the same questions and for the most part they all matched. I am so excited for her to get married. Her and her fiancé Dustin are so cute and I know they are going to be so happy together. Afterward prayer our home teachers talked to us about prayer and then I blogged (which is basically writing in my journal by the way) and then read a little more and then hit the bed!

Friday June 19th

2009-06-20T05:49:00.001-07:00

Free at last! Today I had classes in the morning and then after lunch Trish, Rachel and I were going to go out, but had nowhere to go, we were going to volunteer at a hospital, but we called and nobody there spoke English so we couldn't exactly arrange for us to go. At this point we didn't have enough time to go to the Old City or anything, so we sat in our birthday bungalow fort thingy and watched the Notebook. I have never watched it all the way through, and I just have to say that it is one of my new favorites and it is adorable. After seeing that movie I think I might have been born in the wrong time era, because I loved all the clothes, the dancing and the music, I wish we still did things like they did back then. Funny part is some of the clothes in that movie are actually back in style now! After that we had about half hour until dinner, so the only thing we could do was start A Walk to Remember, another classic. Then we went to dinner.

Maya Sharem: After we went with Emily, Aubrey, Russell, and Mason to West J. We went Maya Sharem, which is an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood. They have signs hanging outside the neighborhood saying "Please Stop This" and it talks about how offensive it is for them when girls dress immodestly and asks that girls please be covered. We had to make sure all our technology, like cameras and cell phones were in our pockets because they will literally stone you if they see you with it because you can't use that stuff on Shabbat, which starts at sundown on Friday. It was actually a little scary walking around because people gave you dirty stares or just stared you down. I'm glad we went though because it was really neat to see. Everybody was dressed up, and since nobody could drive a car because it was Shabbat (I guess they'll throw rocks at the cars if they see any), all the kids were in the streets playing games and walking around. Even their two year-olds were dressed up in Sunday best and running in the streets! After that we went to the only place open at night in West J – surprise surprise. . . McDonalds again! We spent a while talking there and then took a van back to the center.

Friday night stuck in the center: When we got back it was about 10:00 pm but we needed to stay up until midnight because Trisha's birthday is the 20^th and we wanted to stay up to do the birthday dance and welcome in her birthday. We wasted the time until midnight talking, watching people play volleyball and or course messing around on computers blog-stalking, emailing, and showing each other our funny videos. Then at about 5 minutes until 12 we ran down to our room and unfortunately none of us had the "You Make Me Feel Like A Star" birthday song on our computer or iPod, but we were able to find another song and had crazy fun jumping on the bed and dancing obnoxiously to celebrate Trisha being 19! It was very exciting and so much fun. When we were out of energy we started trying to figure out 19 crazy/cool things we could do together since we were both officially 19, but couldn't really come up with anything good. We came to the conclusion that since Trish has never been kissed and is now 19 and there are exactly 19 boys here at the JC we are going to get them all to give her a kiss on the cheek, forehead, head, or hand in the next 19 hours, it's going to be great! After that we settled onto our Birthday bed and I played with Trisha's hair while we finished A Walk to Remember, and then we went to bed.

Thursday June 18th

2009-06-19T12:44:00.001-07:00

It's my Birthday! I'm officially now 19 – I know, I'm getting up there! It was a wonderful birthday thanks to all my great friends I have here! I woke up bright and early to get a workout in and start the morning off right. It was cleaning checks, but my roommates (Rach and Trish) refused to let me do a thing, I couldn't even make my own bed, apparently birthday girls aren't allowed to clean. It was really sweet of them, I have the bestest roommates! Unfortunately having a birthday doesn't get you out of class – we had a lot of hours sitting today. I thought I had avoided the big group birthday singing when I made it through Old Testament, Judaism, and Jordan Orientation without my birthday being mentioned (Just for the record, that is 5 hours of sitting thus far). I did get a small round of applause when I went into Judaism, and was hoping we could leave it at that but then right before everyone left the orientation Rach announced it was my birthday and of course I got a little birthday song. It's so awkward when everyone is singing because you don't really know what to do because you are not singing and everyone is looking at you – so I just smiled, and yeah. . . Then it was lunch and then I went down to my room and SURPRISE! There were stars all over my bulletin board with nice notes on them, and Rach wrote me a really cute card too. I was so excited! I'm so lucky I have friends here who made my day so great. Rachel came down and I jumped on her with a huge hug, and we were just in a silly fun mood. We decided the only solution was to make a music video to one of my favorites – Josh Gracin, Unbelievable. So we positioned the camera, cranked up the music and had a blast! We sang and danced and looked absolutely ridiculous, but know I have a great music video dedicated to my 19^th birthday that will last through the centuries. After our own private dance part we went and baked cookies at the Whipple's apartment. I had previously bought cake mixes in the Old City to make cake mix cookies. I couldn't find German Chocolate cake mixes, so we got chocolate instead. The Whipple's were so nice – Sister Whipple let us borrow all the ingredients and supplies we needed to make the cookies. Brother Whipple just sat and talked to us and it was a lot of fun to hear about what he had learned in Jerusalem and the experiences he had enjoyed most. As far as the cookies went, in true Stephanie style I couldn't remember the recipe for cake mix cookies (easiest recipe ever), and it was 3:00 am in Utah when I needed the recipe, so I decided to look it up online. I don't think it was quite the right recipe because the cookies were nothing like ours, although they still tasted just fine. It was basically cake in cookie form. Also true Stephanie form I ate about half the cookie dough (if you could call it that) before we even got it in the oven. I had planned on giving out some of the cookies as thank you's, but since they didn't turn out quite as planned I decided against it and instead ended up eating about half of the cookies too. After cookies Rachel and I realized how little time we had to finish our Islam midterm before class at 4. We literally finished at 3:56 pm and ran up to print them off and make it to class on time! Phew – that might have been cutting it a little too close. Class passed relatively uneventful, we turned in our midterms, mine ended up being 13 pages single spaced, and then at the end of class we got our traumatizing 7 page papers back graded and I got an A, which I was very pleased with (we're up to 7 hours sitting now FYI). After that class was dinner, and about half way we were sitting around telling our most embarrassing stories when Catherine Taggert stood up on her chair and yelled . . . we have a birthday! Oh boy- she then went on to say, "those of you who don't know Stephanie, she's baby hungry, she sleeps up and at an odd angle so the blood will rush to her head to not only make her smarter, but she also thinks it gives her a better nights rest." It didn't stop there, but then Dan decided to raise his hand and told about how I thought if you came at a fly straight on it couldn't see you and in elementary school I had been asked if I was a midget. Golly, I love tons of attention (not)! After dinner we had a movie scheduled at 7:00 pm that we had to write a paper on. So it was back into a room to sit for another two hours. The movie was actually really funny, but I was kind of done sitting, which makes sense since at this point we were up to 9 hours of sitting! They are trying to kill us slowly by numbing our behinds. After that I went back to my room to find a fort! Rachel had made me a birthday fort, we named it the Birthday Bed Bonanza. It is two mattresses on the floor with a huge stack of blankets and of course a sheet hanging overhead. At the foot of the mattresses was a nightstand with laptops and movies all ready to go. I told you I have the best roommates. We are going to leave up the Birthday Bed at least until Trisha's birthday which is on Saturday. After that we of course had to turn on some music and have a little fun and then most of the girls went to play volleyball, they set up teams and tournamont brackets. I didn't sign up because I didn't want to make whichever team I was on lose, there is a reason I run people. When they all go back I was just sitting organizing pictures and videos when Cat, Ashley and Erin came in with their speakers and the song "They Say It's Your Birthday" playing. I then got a special number from them including multiple hip thrusts and some legit air guitar playing. Ha ha, it was great! It was nice of them and I just had a great birthday. The fun didn't end there. Trisha, Rachel and I decided to all sleep on our Birthday Bed, I got the middle because it was my birthday. We turned on the Notebook, but didn't make it in very far because we were all just exhausted – so we went to bed. Shout out to Rachel for making my 19^th birthday so incredibly fun and memorable. Thanks girlie -

Our Birthday Bungalow Bananza, and me, and a cookie I made, and a ridiculous hat Rachel made me wear to the movie that night

Wednesday June 17th

2009-06-19T12:42:00.001-07:00

One more day until my birthday! That means only 9 more days until I find out if I got into the nursing program! Today we had classes in the morning and were done at 11:00! Yeah, boredom has definitely set in. I had no idea what I was going to do for six hours until I had Arabic. This is so pathetic, but I actually got on my computer and started playing computer games – yeah, that's right, that's how bored I was. It was horrible. I was going to work out, but my running buddy didn't show up, so I just got to work out by myself. After Arabic was dinner and then we had a talent show. I had nothing to do, so I decided to go early to the talent show and save seats, so I did. I was front and center, which was really great for during the talent show. It was an incredible show. Here was the line-up:

One of my favorites was Kellyn and her fun song, she's got so much personality, I just love it! I thought Kristi's was hilarious. She had Russell come up and serenaded him with Enrique's Hero. She sang half in Spanish half in English, and the whole time Russell was just up there smiling, and nodding and making funny faces. Nobody really knows why she had Russell come up, but it sure made it a lot funnier. I loved the guys who sang Acapella, it was just so good! I could listen to Acapella music all day. Mandy stood up and read a piece she wrote about Jerusalem and asked Brigitte to come up and play the piano. Brigitte just made up some stuff on the spot, but it just sounded so good together. We all asked Mandy to send us an email with the piece she had written after. Another great performance was Brent and Dan. They made up this funny song that basically just had a million Jerusalem inside jokes in it, I could not stop laughing. In it they said a line about how if they were rich they would buy so many pita's that they would actually get one after the girl's had been through! Ha ha, I loved it, too true. The very last number was from Sound of Music and some of the people here did the "So long, farewell . . ." song and it was just so good and matched the movie perfectly. We have such fun, cool, wonderful people here! After the talent show there was refreshments in the Oasis and then I was planning on going to bed, but was feeling a little homesick, so I called my mom instead! We talked all about life, my birthday, and how old I was getting, etc. etc. Then it really was way past my bedtime, and so I turned in for the night.

Tuesday June 16th

2009-06-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

Classes and classes and classes, the good news is this week is the last week of Islam and Judaism, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I spent some time that day emailing and getting caught up with that kind of stuff and then I don't know what I did with my life. Boredom has started to set in . . . some days there is just not much to do. You don't have the time or the energy to go into the Old City, you are sick of homework and don't want to spend your free time studying, you can't leave the center, and you just don't have anything to do. I filled my time with pointless tasks until 4 when we went to class again. After class was dinner and then at 7:30 was a forum. The speaker was a Palestinian man who had a great sense of humor. He talked about the Israeli-Palestine conflict and his ideas and opinions of how a solution should be reached. It was really quite interesting, my favorite part was his stories about experiences with Americans and also just his experiences in Israel. During the forum I made a bracelet for Aubrey, the kind that you make out of threads, it took me the whole time. After the forum I had a very interesting experience as I walked back to my room. I was walking down the hall when I heard an interesting sound, and saw something falling, and it just so happened to be a Werther's Original candy – hmm. It is now raining candy in Jerusalem. I kept walking and heard the same sound and saw another candy fall, and of course picked it up. I kept hoping more candy would fall, but it didn't. I still feel pretty lucky that I got some candy from heaven though – and after that I went to bed!

Monday June 15th

2009-06-15T10:20:00.001-07:00

Today was our field trip to bible land! So we didn't go to lands where the bible actually took place, but to a place called Neot Kidumim. This organization set up this place and it just has tons of acres of land that they are restoring to how they were in bible times. When they first started it was all a dessert, but then they've started planting things and so now the land has trees all over and is just thriving! Today we decided to film a music video at all the different locations we were going to and filmed different people doing random things all along the way – it was so much fun! We did it to the song Ain't No Mountain High Enough and most of our bus was in it, it was great! Now I'll tell you about our different stops. . .

Cistern: When they got the land there were about 50 cisterns and this is how the people were able to live on the land. A cistern is a standing water source and most families in bible time had at least one. While at the cistern we acted out the story of Eliezer and Rebbekah, Kristi was Rebbekah and Tyler was Eliezer and ten other people were camels. It was hilarious, Kristi was talking in this Shakespearean voice and saying thine and thou and whatnot. So the story is that Eliezer is sent by Abraham to find a wife for Isaac and so he travels to Abraham's home town to find someone. He is outside the city by the well when he prays to God and asks him to send a woman who will pull up water for not only him, but all his camels as well, and that will tell him the woman is the one who should marry Isaac. Well, Rebekkah comes along and Eliezer asks her to draw him water, and she does and offers to draw water for all his camels as well. Camels drink 150 quarts in one sitting, this means she would have had to draw water from the well about 300 times to give water enough for Eliezer and his ten camels! I pulled water up once and I wouldn't call it easy, so that was really a feat. We talked about how back then they looked for the characteristic of hospitality in their wives and Rebekkah giving this service to Eliezer was a great act of hospitality. We also talked about how wells/cisterns used to be a place to meet and greet people and our tour guide said that it was the bible facebook! Ha ha, I loved it! The point is cisterns are great and they kept our ancestors way back when alive.

Me and Rach at the Cistern!

Herding Sheep & Goats: The next station we went through this fence to a goat and sheep pen! While we were learning about the goats and sheep they were walking around us and one spit up on Rachel's skirt! Ha ha- poor girl! We learned about how goats scatter when afraid and protect themselves with their horns, but sheep have no defense mechanism and so they just huddle together in a circle and put their heads in the middle. We talked about how if we are in trouble we can help keep each other safe like the sheep do. After talking, we split into three teams and each took turns trying to herd the animals. I was in the first group and our mission was to get them to the watering hole, get them all to drink, and then get them back to home base. There was actually no watering hole and no home base, but there was a ring of rocks with a red flag in the middle (our watering hole) and a ring of rocks with a green flag in the middle (our home base). We managed to get the sheep and goats to the red flag, but ended up "drowning" most of them in the water, and we couldn't get them all to stand in a circle around the rock circle, but it was fun! Getting them to home base was a little easier, we figured out if you clapped behind their ear they would walk forward. Afterwards we talked about how one shepherd boy could move hundreds of sheep and it is because they get to know him and they communicate. The sheep will listen to that boys voice and usually he will pick a leader whom he will buddy up to and then the rest of the sheep will follow that leader. This is a really cool thought because Christ is the ultimate shepherd and we need to be able to recognize his voice so we can follow him and he will keep us on the safe path throughout life.

Me, Rach, and then the goats

Trees & Zataar: After that we walked along this path and would stop and learn about fig trees, and sycamore trees and all sorts of other desert life. I've decided I don't care much for trees, but we did learn some cool things. We learned that sycamore trees have salt in their branches and so they provide natural air conditioning because they soak up the moisture, so if you are stuck in the desert and find a sycamore, you're good to go! We stopped by an almond tree and after many attempts I was able to crack one open and eat it and surprisingly it was absolutely disgusting! I guess real raw almonds are bitter and it is the water and stuff that they wash them with when they process them that takes of the gross cyanide coating. Yeah, that's right – cyanide, I found out after I ate the almond that cyanide is poisonous and can make you sick! Hopefully I'll be ok. We learned about Aregano and it is this bush plant kind of thing and if you mash it up with salt you can make zataar, which is a really yummy spice we put on bread here. So, we picked some aregano and made zataar out of it! It was a lot of fun doing it once, but I'm glad we can get aregano at a store nowadays. Aregano is a plant that symbolized humility and that is why it is the plant the children of Israel used to wipe the blood across their door frames so the angel of death would pass by them and not kill their first born. It is also the plant that was put in Christ's mouth as he stood on the cross, how fitting that the son of God, who suffered for the sins of the world and lived a perfect life died with humility in character, and the symbol of humility on his body. It was a fun learning experience!

Making Zataar

Pita & Herbal Tea: Next we ate our lunches at this little campfire pit kind of deal and then made three fires! On one we roasted some wheat and it tasted like popcorn kernels, but was soft. On the other we made pita out of flour, salt and water and then you just put them on a metal thing over the fire to cook it, it was pretty good! Tasted like a bland pancake, but I liked it. We also had herbal tea and all we did was boil water and put mint leaves in it, and it was pretty good. I couldn't believe how hot it was by the fires, it was just unbearable to be near them. I can't believe that people used to make fires out in that heat all the time and that's how they had to cook all their meals! Wow-

Barley: Then we went to a place where they put their barley and have the animals drag a board with sharp metal pieces stuck into it to cut it and then they sift it to get the actual wheatish part to sift down. We learned all about Ruth and Naomi and Boaz and that story. My favorite part was making a mess of the wheat after the tour guide was done talking.

Me sifting through the barley

Bells & Watermill: On the pathway to our next stop we saw some crazy random bells and then a cool watermill thing where you could run like a hamster and water would come out! Of course I had to get on that. So did Mason and Russell, but they went about it in a little different way. Russell did the work while Mason rode on top.

We have no idea what these were for, but we sure had fun with them and everyone knew we were there from the noise we were making!

Me, I actually fell down right after this picture and started going up!

Mason and Russell - they're crazy

Torah Scribe: Our last stop of the day was at this guy who lives life as a scribe of the Torah. It takes him about two to three hours to write one mezzuza, which is on a small piece of paper and would take 5 minutes to write. He writes with a reed pen and uses ink made from different plants. His main job is to write the Torah on animal skins. It is incredible! If he makes a mistake he has to scratch it out and it is just a ton of work. These animal skins are then stitched together on the seams and rolled into a giant scroll. It was amazing to see! We saw one that has been around for 220 years and it still looks brand new. These giant Torah scrolls sell for an average price of $25,000-30,000! This man dedicates years to completing one Torah of this size, it was simply incredible, I didn't realize people put so many years into creating one piece of work! After hearing all about this man's job he gave the center a gift and wrote BYU Jerusalem in Hebrew on a piece of paper with his ink and reed pen and gave it to us! He also wrote the date according to the Hebrew calendar and signed his name.

Me and Russell passing time during the Torah talking, notice his pony tail - he became the victim of BYU JC Girl's Camp 09. Some of the girls did crazy hair and sang girls camp songs and decided Russell needed to be included.

Train Ride: After saying goodbye we got on a little train/tram and it was the kind where you faced the people across from you, but it was tight our knees couldn't fit – I ended up dangling my legs over the side. When we came to a stop I hopped out of the side I was dangling out and then the tram started moving! Ah – so I jumped onto another seat that had an empty spot and ended up skinning my arm, but I was just glad I didn't have to walk by myself in the heat to an unknown destination. After that we got on the bus and headed back to the center.

Me and Michael, this was my first seat on the train ride

And after I jumped back on the train after almost being left I sat by Sydney

JC: When we got back I worked on my blog and got pictures and then went to dinner. Aubrey finished editing all our footage from our music video today and it's hilarious! It turned out so good, I'm so glad we did it and it is definitely going to become a field trip day tradition. Ah, seriously I cannot describe how happy I am! Aubrey did some really good editing and everyone in the video did such a good job too! For FHE we watched some short LDS videos like "The Touch" where the woman touches the hem of Christ's garment and is healed, and other movies like that. Then we discussed them as a group and it was fun to see everybody's viewpoint. Then I got to go work out in that beautiful weight room by myself- woohoo! Then it was bedtime.

Here is our amazing music video - I really hope it works!

Sunday June 14th

2009-06-14T11:26:00.003-07:00

Wow, I should have gotten to bed earlier! I woke up at 7:43 am, and breakfast was ending at 7:50 and our bus was picking us up at 8:00 am! I can't believe I slept through my alarm, which meant this time I dogged Eric for running! He said it was no big deal, but I still felt so bad! I got ready incredibly fast then grabbed breakfast and then Bethany came up and told us that we weren't leaving until 8:15 – phew. We slowed down the pace and even got to brush our teeth and then met up at the gate. I sat by Kyle and Katherine Lyman on the van ride over which was great because I got to know both of them a little better, they are both such nice people, and so interesting to talk to.

Hospital: When we got to Ein Karem we went to a hospital and at first I had no idea what we were trying to see, but Jonah was leading the way. Well, we all paid 5 shecks and then went into this Jewish synagogue with 12 windows. They are stained glass and were done by a famous Jewish artist. Each window represents one of the tribes of Israel and the blessing bestowed upon that tribe. It was really neat because at first they were just windows, but then as we were told the symbolism behind each you saw the time and energy that had gone into creating them and you saw how beautiful they truly were. They were incredible, I wish I could remember what everything in each window stood for.

Church of Mary and Elizabeth: Traditionally Ein Karem is the birthplace of John the Baptist, so there are several places there to commemorate him and his family. The first church we went had to do with Mary and Elizabeth and was honoring those wonderful women. There is a well in a crypt that supposedly Mary drew water from. There is also a rock in there that Elizabeth and John hid behind when Herod came to kill all the baby boys in the kingdom. Those two things were all in one room and on the floor above was a big room with beautiful paintings and an organ. Rachel asked one of the religious leaders if we could sing a hymn, and he said that would be fine. We started singing and more and more people filtered in and they were all sitting down like they were waiting for something. We finished singing I Know that My Redeemer Lives and started singing Nearer My God to Thee feeling a little uncomfortable, but taking advantage of our opportunity. Well, as we were finishing a guy walked up to the pulpit and started talking! Oops – we shuffled out of there pretty darn quick.

Mary's Spring: Then we walked down this dirt path to our next stop. It was a beautiful view from the path, I think Ein Karem is one of the most beautiful places in Israel, it is so green and has a lot of flowers. At the end of the path was a big hole in the wall that had a little bit of water trickling out of it onto the ground. This is the spring that sprung up when Mary conceived Jesus and it is the water source of the well we saw in the first church. I of course wanted to climb into the hole and see where this hole led to, but there were a lot of flies and spider webs, so I decided against it but did get a picture of me by the spring. We walked up this cute street with quaint little shops and we passed a school. These little kids came to the gate and were trying to talk to us in Hebrew, but all we knew was "shalom" which means hello. The kids were adorable though, I just wish I could speak Hebrew, and Arabic and a lot of other languages for that matter. The street led to surprise surprise, another church!

Church of John the Baptist: This church was called St. John Ba Harim, and it is a church commemorates his life and ministry. It was hard to know what the different things inside were because you weren't allowed to talk and all the signs were in a language other than English (Latin I think). It was still fun to visit and see though. After going through the chapel we started talking to a monk and he was telling us about his life. He said that when you become a monk you make three covenants, and so rope belt has three knots. The first covenant is one of poverty, you give away everything you have to the poor and come to live in a monastery. The next is chastity, so they don't get married. The last is obedience, and the word obedience literally means 'listen', so basically they try to listen to and follow God and those closer to God than them. After he explained the three knots he said, "to put it simply, I have no money, no honey, and I don't get around much." Ha ha- I thought that was a great one! After talking to the monk we walked around the grounds, which were very peaceful, they had a lot of trees and so we ate lunch there in the shade. I had left my lunch back at the center because I didn't want to carry it around all day, but I had granola for a snack. After lunch we walked down the street to a gelato place called Tzorro and some people got a treat, I didn't want to ruin my lunch though. Then we waited for the van at Mary's spring. Hannah, Stephen and Andy were the entertainment. Stephen beat-boxed while Andy and Hannah (and sometimes Bethany) sang. It was a lot of fun listening to them. Then I started talking to Jonah and he taught Clayton Conley Korean in the MTC! Jonah served his mission in Korea and got back just about a year ago. After waiting forever the vans arrived and we headed home.

The Center: When we got back I was exhausted, probably from not getting near enough sleep the night before. I ate part of my lunch then took a little nap. When I woke up I had to get to work! We have a midterm in our Islam class and it's a take home test and is due Tuesday. It's the weirdest thing because he kept emphasizing that it was more like a take home exercise than a midterm, but you just have to read from the book and then write down the answers to the questions. He literally just wants charts from the book, and I just can't help thinking why am I wasting my time typing up these big charts with lots of numbers when they are just sitting in our book, but that's what he wants. I worked on it until dinner and then ate a good meal and relaxed outside for a while, I love it when it is nice and cool and just beautiful! I talked to Eric for a while and apologized a gazillion times for not waking up – he was so nice about it. Then I worked on the midterm a little more and then blogged and went to bed.

Saturday June 13th

2009-06-14T11:26:00.001-07:00

Shabbat again . . . I slept in, woke up, got ready and went to breakfast. I spent my time between breakfast and church catching up on my blog and then went to church Sacrament meeting was wonderful, they always fill the meeting with about four speakers and two musical numbers, so you always are so uplifted. For Sunday School I went to Rachel and Michael's class, they teach the youth class. They usually only have two kids (the Huff girls) so they asked me if I would come, I of course did. There was also a girl named Jessica visiting from Cairo. We learned about the Plan of Salvation/Happiness/Mercy/Redemption/Restoration. It was a good lesson. For Relief Society Erin taught and she taught about forgiveness. She had asked girls previously in the week to think about instances where they were asked to forgive and had them come up and share and it was incredible to hear the experiences different girls had gone through and it really strengthened my testimony of forgiveness. At the end of the lesson Karyn came up and sang Where Can I Turn for Peace and the spirit was so strong. I know Heavenly Father loves us and will forgive us all our sins. Jesus Christ suffered on Gethsemane for the sins of all the world and when we go to him he will take our sins upon him. I love this gospel! After church I went and got completely caught up on my blogs and went and traded pictures with Callie and Aubrey and Rachel and we all just sat around talking. I started playing minesweeper and I am addicted! I have never actually won though, which is depressing, but it is on expert level. After dinner I went and posted pictures on my blog and just ended up talking with people in the computer room. It's a lot of fun just talking, that's how you really get to know people and that's what I spend the majority of my free time here doing. At 8:00 pm we had branch prayer, which is always fun and then I planned my Sunday out. We are going to join a group going to Ein Karem, which is where John the Baptist was born. Eric made my night, he said he would get up and run with me tomorrow at 6:45 and I can hardly wait! After figuring out the plan I ended up in Aubrey and Emily's room again and we stayed up late talking and laughing. Aubrey got a package from home with skittles and so we were throwing them to each other and trying to catch them in our mouths and we set a record of seven. I threw and Aubrey caught, and seven is quite an accomplishment if you consider what a horrible throw I am! I could talk to those girls all night, and I practically did! When I finally went to my room I got ready for bed and then started talking to my roommate Trisha just about life and all our worries and hopes. Then Rach came in and joined the conversation and moral of the story – I got to bed way too late, but I had a great night!

You know you have been to the Jerusalem Center when. . .

2009-06-13T09:29:00.001-07:00

You think it is normal to wear geenie pants to class.
You have to read the bible dictionary to understand peoples jokes.
You think of the Hard Rock cafe, and the song YMCA comes to mind.
It is second nature to walk into a building and automatically hand your bag to the man standing next to the door.
You walk into a shop and expect to hear, "We love you Mormons!"
You think of marriage proposals in terms of how many camels they are willing to pay.
You think of Egypt and run to the bathroom.
It is second nature to bring a roll of toilet paper with you everywhere you go.
You think going on Facebook is a big deal!
You get excited when there is no dill in your dinner.
At dinner time all you can talk about is other food.
The names Rita and Shabban mean something to you.
You feel naked without your water bottle... and fanny pack!
Giving a hug seems to be breaking the law of chastity.
You can openly talk about bowel movements with the people around you.
It is a sin to wear flip flops.
One set of stairs seems like no big deal.
You can say you have fallen asleep on a structure more than 3000 years old.
You sing a song in Hebrew and everyone joins in.
Waking up at 7:00 is sleeping in.
Talking about scabies is normal in dinner conversation.
You have to be protected from the pope.
It seems natural to have armed men accompany you on a field trip.
Wearing capris is immodest.
You avoid the Allen's when you sneak food out of the Oasis.
The word Oasis makes you hungry.
You see cats mating during dinner and don't think twice.
You can load your dishes fast enough to get them on a moving cart.
You have 78 best friends!

Friday June 12th

2009-06-13T08:16:00.001-07:00

Funny day, somewhat embarrassing! I ate breakfast and went to classes and after ANE we had an hour break until Arabic. Well, I had to get my run in and didn't want to wait until the heat of the day. I asked the Allen's if I was allowed to wear shorts, they said no, so I asked about Capri genie pants and they said that was fine. So, I ended up running around the center with my white genie pants with dark blue spandex underneath and a white v-neck and purple running shoes. I looked pretty hilarious! It was way less hot than long pants would've been though. I finished running at 10:55 am and had class at 11:00! So I quickly changed and went to class still sweating. Well, apparently the class before had seen me outside running because I had been running on the floor of the classrooms and my teacher definitely noticed! Embarrassing! I guess they could see me the whole time. Oh well . . . after class I took a little nap and then finished the time I had on the bike. Then we did Tarek's workout again and it was a ton easier this time, I'm not sure why. After his workout there were all these people in the gym and we ended up having a little ab party and then I had to bike some more. I showered and went to dinner and then I called my mom. I got to talk to her forever, it was so good. We talked about anything and everything, I could just talk to her for hours. I was super emotional and wasn't really sure why, but hey, if you need to cry to someone your mom is the one to go to. After talking to her I went upstairs to see what everyone else was up to. We had decided not to go to West Jerusalem because although that is the only place we are allowed at night we always go there on Friday's and everything is always closed because the Jews Sabbath starts at sunset. Obviously some other JC students were thinking the same thing because there was a movie going in every room that had a TV screen or a projector. I joined Trish, Rach, Chadwick and Kenzie in watching the 2^nd Lord of the Rings. I've never seen those movies before and it was about an hour in, so I was totally lost. It made me so scared and nervous though, I kept flinching because all the creatures in that movie are horrible! Everybody is a bad guy and there is just so much fighting, I don't know if I ever care to see the rest of them. I finally ended up leaving because I didn't care to see the end and it was getting late. After that I movie hopped. I went and saw a little of High School Musical 3, and then some You've Got Mail, and ended with Anne of Green Gables. I told you, it was movie night at the JC. I was tired though, so then I just went to bed.

Thursday June 11th

2009-06-13T08:15:00.003-07:00

Thursday was a pretty normal day. We had classes in the morning and then at 11:00 am I help set the dinner table for a special Seder dinner we were having that night. I got my biking and lifting in before Islam, they moved it to 3 so we could start the Seder dinner at 5:30 pm. I had to go help finish setting up at 5:10 and then we started! I was sitting with Trisha (my lovely roommate) and then Matt Adams and Sydney. Ophir Yardin led us through the whole meal. We had these little books with pictures so we knew what to say and do. It was a legite Passover dinner. We had matzah and drank grape juice and said the prayers and it was actually really cool. I was surprised the grape juice smelled like bread and was a little bitter! For the program thing we all read from the book and had narrators tell us about the Exodus story and there were different Hebrew musical numbers all throughout. It was fun saying the prayers and just seeing what the Jews do for every Passover, I just can't believe it! They put a lot of time and tradition into everything they do, it's their life. There was a lot to do before we got to the actual dinner -I was starving by the time we actually got to eat. The tables were set up all nice with white table clothes and multiple forks and spoons. We took turns serving the different parts of the meal. I cleared dinner and served dessert. It was a really fun night. My favorite part was after dinner Ophir said that the matzah was missing and we all ran all around the sixth floor trying to find it. They finally found it in a classroom next to the computer lab. We took it back and broke the last piece of matzah and we all ate some. You end with that taste in your mouth rather than dessert because it reminds you of the unleavened bread the children of Israel ate in the wilderness. It was a really fun night and I am glad I was able to have the experience of enjoying a Seder dinner with a real Jew who knew all the traditions and whatnot. Savannah was telling me she grew up doing Christmas around the world, so they would celebrate all the different holidays. She grew up celebrating Hanukah and all sorts of other holidays. I think it would be so cool to do something like that so my kids can get a little taste of other cultures and other religions. I love how when my family travels we go to different churches because I feel like that has exposed me to other religions in a way I could not get from reading or being told about the religion. After the Seder dinner was all over I had to go run (I love my life) and then I went to bed!

Picture of us at Seder - the funny smile is because they wouldn't wait for me to finish chewing my food. . .

Here's the smile with the food in my teeth - don't worry about it!

Wednesday June 10th

2009-06-13T08:15:00.001-07:00

Surprise field trip today! It's kind of a crazy week.

Yad Vashem: We split into different small buses and then met our professor, Ophir Yardin, at Yad Vashem. It is on the Mount of Memories and it is a Holocaust Museum. When we first got there Professor Yardin showed us the grounds. We went down the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations. It is this big sidewalk with trees planted on both sides. They planted a tree for each person from another country that put their life in danger to save a Jew. There are thousands and thousands of trees and it was humbling to realize how many people were involved in the Holocaust and how many people risked their own life to save another's. Next we went to some of the outside monuments which included a children's memorial and just some other statues at different places around the outside walking paths.

The Museum: Then we went to the front of the museum, split into three groups, and got headphones and a tour guide. The first thing she told us about was the strange shape of the building. It is a triangle with the top point pointing to the sky, it kind of looks like a Toblerone chocolate bar. It is actually an arrow pointing towards the city of Jerusalem, the Holy Land. The two opposing ends hang off the mountain and are attached to the mountain by bridges. The bridge going into the museum is parallel to the Avenue of the Righteous Among Nations, representing how some people chose the path that lead to the Holocaust while at the same time others were fighting those people. The first thing in the museum is a movie wall where they first played movies of Jews in their daily lives, singing, dancing, getting ready for school, eating, etc. Then the screen showed the people packing up and crying and leaving their homes and their normal lives. The rest of the museum went in chronological order and you just weaved back and forth to go to each room. It was super crowded when we were there and the way it is set up it was hard for thirty of us to get around one tour guide. We had headsets so we could hear her, but we couldn't always see what she was talking about. The museum was incredible, you could spend days in there and still not see everything. I liked how much thought they put into what they did. There was so much symbolism and for me it was these little details that made it such a great experience. As you go through the museum the spaces start getting smaller and tighter, and as you go through you are emotionally more and more uncomfortable. It was designed with the purpose of making you feel physically less comfortable as you feel emotionally less comfortable. The building is made of cement slabs, and so you can see where they hooked the different pieces together. These parts of the building are not covered up because they represent the scars from the Holocaust that will never completely go away. Some of the hardest parts for me were when the tour guide told us about how doctors would use the Jews in experiments to see how much the human body could handle. They especially liked to test pregnant women and they liked to do twin studies. The only thing I didn't like about the museum was how in some rooms were very gruesome movies and pictures that literally made me sick to my stomach. I guess it is good that it helps people realize what really was happening, but at the same time it was really hard to see. When we walked out of the museum you could see the triangle shape, but at this end the triangle was opening up. This represented the fact that even though this was such a hard time for the Jews they had hope for the future. I would love to go back to the museum and spend some time on my own going through and reading some of the personal stories and seeing the personal testimonies, that is what really brings the Holocaust alive for me and I think seeing those survivors reminds you that there is more than death, there is hope.

Children's Memorial: After the museum we went through the children's memorial. There are five candles in there and that is the only light. A mirror system is set up so that there appears to be candles all over every wall, on the ceiling and on the floor. As you walked through you could hear the names of children who had died in the Holocaust and where they were from and the date they died. I really liked that memorial.

Mount Herzl: After that we all walked up to another part of the Mount of Memories and ate our lunch on picnic benches. It was nice and relaxing sitting in the shade, I didn't realize how long we'd been walking – we were in the museum for almost 4 hours! After lunch we went to Mt. Herzl where we all laid on the grass and Mr. Yardin told us about important things that I know nothing about because I fell asleep on the grass! Oops- I guess a lot of people ended up falling asleep though, so at least I wasn't the only one. Then we went up to the band cage thing on the top of Mount Herzl and that is where they have the Israeli Independence Day celebration. They have this big have circle stand thing where the choir stands and sings and then for the celebration they set up a bunch of stands and thousands of people gather to watch. It's by invitation only so most Jews never actually get to go to the celebration.

Military Cemetery: Then we went to a big memorial military cemetery kind of place where a bunch of important people are buried. The secular Jews are the ones who set it up so it's all Presidents' and military people and no religious leaders. At that point we were all just hot and exhausted and I heard a bunch of cool stories and important things and I'm sure they were great, I just can't remember any of it at this point, but if I ever remember I'll let ya know!

After our nine our field trip I was ready for a nap, and so I slept for an hour until dinner and then ate dinner. I ended up sitting at the table talking forever and ever. It is fun just talking and getting to know people. After that I was definitely ready for bed again, so I went to bed at about 8:00 pm and it was bliss.

Tuesday June 9th

2009-06-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

Today was classes, but we had a weird schedule compared to normal. We only had Old Testament in the morning and then announcements and linen exchange. Then I decided to lie down and take a little nap . . . ummm, I woke up four hours later, oops. I was fasting for Kristan and her family, so I worked out but did really light weights and biked with less resistance and I finished my workout just in time for our Islam class. This is the first time I have ever fasted that I didn't feel hunger at all while I was fasting. As soon as I broke my fast I realized how hungry my body was. After we got out of class I ate dinner and I had such a sweet tooth, I ate all of my dessert and then half of Rachel's. Then Mason, Russell, Rachel Lee, Rachel Herrmann and I all went to West Jerusalem and on the way I ate a whole pack of Mentos. We met up with Emily, Andy, Aubrey, Rachel Curtis, Jenna and Jonah at a little Pizza place in West J. They had eaten there for Emily's 22^nd birthday! Happy birthday Emily! After they were done eating we went to Chocolate by the Bald Man to get gelato for her birthday treat. On the way we passed these young Jewish girls at a bake sale and of course I had to support the cause. I ended up getting a chocolate chip cookie and a chocolate chip muffin and I was so happy! Then we went to the Bald Man place on Ben Yehuda and I got Kinder Bueno Bar gelato, and some kind with waffle pieces in it and I got Feraro Rocher which was my favorite and amazing! We went around the table after ice cream and told how we had met Emily and our favorite thing about her. It was kind of funny that I've known her the longest, you just forget that you had a history before the Jerusalem Center when you are here. After dessert we went to McDonald's to catch a van back and Andy taught me and Emily how to hold yourself up parallel on a pole, it was fun! I officially got dubbed a monkey because I was climbing up the pole and trying all these tricks and just being silly. At one point this Mom and her little kid stopped to watch our "tricks" and even tried some of them. It was pretty funny, Rachel was like, your daughter is so cute and then asked her name, and the lady said his name was Ezekiel! Oops - he was a cute kid and even gave me and Rach a kiss on the cheek- my first kiss in Jerusalem! It was a fun fun night in West Jerusalem for Emily's birthday! When we got back I still had to run, so I warmed up on the bike and then went and ran circles around the JC again. I must admit, I'm afraid of cats, and there were these two just hanging out watching me and I got so nervous every time I passed them. One time the bigger dark one started running towards me, and so I just started charging him! That scared him off and then after that both cats kind of stayed clear. I was still nervous they were going to spring a surprise attack or something though. After running we had an ab party for Emily's birthday! There were about ten of us and we all went up in the weight room and blasted music and did a five minute ab workout. It was such a production to get five minutes of abs in, but hey, we might actually have abs someday now! After that I showered and went to bed.

Us at the pizza place - YUM!

They were nice enough to give me and Rach a bite

We thoroughly enjoyed it!

We enjoyed the gelato even more!

They were trying to get me to do a sexy face. . . here ya go

Apparently I'm not the only one who enjoyed the gelato!

Waiting for the van and having way too much fun!

The cute little boy we originally thought was a girl who gave me my first kiss in Jerusalem!

The famous McDonald's we are always waiting for the van at