So we’ve been here a little over a week in Israel, and are coming to an end in a couple days. We are in Galilee right now, having visited Peter’s house, Mt. of Beatitudes, and driven by several other historical landmarks including where Jesus fed 5000 with just a few loaves of bread and some fish (Matt 14, Mark 6, Luke 9, John 6), but this site, along with nearly all sites written about Jesus in the Bible have overly adorned monuments that take away from the history. After visiting the Garden of Gethsemane, Mount of Olives, the cross site, and the tomb of Yeshua Messiah (what the Christians here call Jesus Christ), and dozens of other biblical sites, you really have to use your imagination to get the picture.

The first few days of this trip were very difficult, so much that we changed our flights back home to make the trip shorter. It’s hard to enjoy ourselves right now, and ultimately we’d both prefer to be at home. But we’re here, and we’re gong to make the best out of it. Our original intent, which is still important, is to connect to eachother, and connect with God, and try to understand our life, if just a little bit.

We had the chance to meet up and get coffee in Jerusalem with a couple (a friend of a friend of a friend) that we didn’t know at all! They turned out to be a very nice couple, and invited us to go to worship with them, and since we weren’t doing anything else, we went. A 5 minute walk took us to the basement of a 14 story office building, and opened up to a giant underground amphitheater filled with Christians: locals, messianic Jews, immigrants, and visitors touring the Holy Land. It was definitely not what I’m used to for church, but very very neat. Everything was in English. After singing several pretty worship songs, they got ready for a sermon, but abruptly interrupted themselves to sing ONE MORE song. They sang in Hebrew directly out of Isaiah 61:1-3, with words in English to understand:

“1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes.”

I don’t know why, but I immediately grew uneasy, knowing that an entire congregation of a few hundred people was singing a song to Elisabeth and me — and they didn’t even know it! Although God didn’t heal Jane, He is still letting us know He’s here?!?! I cannot fathom God’s mind.

There was a last minute guest speaker, who was from a huge church in South Carolina, and the theme of his sermon was, of course, dealing with loss! It was kinda comical how much that speaker was talking right to us and had no idea.

Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of me blabbering on, here are a couple pictures of breath-taking moments we’ve had here.

Wailing Wall with Dome on the Rock behind:
Wailing Wall – Remnants from the Second Temple, extremely holy for Jews
Dome on the Rock – a base rock inside is widely accepted where God first began the creation of Earth. The gold dome is real gold, pure solid gold.
The most ironic part about this is that Jews and Moslems are worshipping just feet from eachother.