Day 6--Arrived in Jerusalem

Tonight we are in Jerusalem, and believe it or not, we get FOX news (in English!) on the TV in our hotel room. The first news we heard was of a tornado today in Florence, Alabama! What a small world we live in! We pray all of you managed to dodge the foul weather.


The weather here is beautiful…absolutely perfect. Our first stop this morning was at Megiddo where we walked through the ruins of the city and looked down on the Jezreel Valley. While we were there we were able to photograph an object that was used as a manger during Bible times. We usually picture the baby Jesus in a wooden manger, but the type that was probably used is like the one in the photograph…made of stone. We exited the city of Megiddo through an ancient water tunnel built by the evil Old Testament king Ahab.




We drove by Mt. Tabor today. This is where Deborah led the army against Sisera in Judges 4 and 5. The photo also shows barley in the foreground. Barley was one of the grains mentioned often in the Bible. We drove through the Jezreel Valley and stopped at the Spring of Harod. Remember, this is the spot where Gideon chose the 400 men to fight the Midianites (depending on the manner they drank water from the spring) in Judges 7. John and Steve gave us a demonstration.



Here in Israel the people still attempt to honor the Sabbath as a religious requirement. This affects non-Jews in the country. For instance, depending on how strict each individual Jew is, there are certain things they don’t do from sundown on Friday until "you can see two stars in the sky" on Saturday evening. Most of the shops are closed, and this includes restaurants. Our guide had difficulty locating a place for our group to stop for lunch, since most of the restaurants were closed. He finally located a…guess what…Burger King! However, it was a kosher Burger King, which means that they served the usual BK items, only the food is prepared in kosher (Jewish-approved) ways. The most obvious to us was the fact that we could not order cheese on our burgers. (Kosher diet never includes meat and dairy foods at the same meal.) Nevertheless, a chance to eat fairly familiar food was a treat to us. Margaret and Lowell certainly look like they are enjoying the experience!
We visited Bethshean, best known as the site where the Philistines hung Saul’s body on the wall in I Samuel 31. There is a huge tell at Bethshean, and it is quite a climb to the top, but several of us took on the challenge. Blaine and Casey (in the photo) were some of the "to-the-top" group. I hope her parents are checking the blog so they can keep up with what she is doing!



After the climb to the top of the tell, we were fairly tired (totally exhausted, to be honest!), but the next event was the two-hour bus ride to Jerusalem. It would have a good opportunity to catch a few winks, but the drive down the Jordan Valley was too interesting to miss. We passed shepherds leading their flocks home for the evening, Bedouin settlements, and the "wilderness of Judea" where John preached. There is much to see at every turn!



We are tired tonight, but we will be in Jerusalem until Wednesday morning, so we can settle in for a few days and enjoy day trips in the area. We are in JERUSALEM! What an exciting sentence to write! I hope the grandchildren, the fifth grade Bible students, the Salt Shakers and the third graders at ABS are keeping up with where we are. For those of you with parents and grandparents on this trip, we want you to know that we are having a great time. Not only are we learning, we are laughing a lot and having a great time. Today the group secretly tried to guess how many times our guide and Ferrell would use certain words like "Jezreel" or "rift". They finally caught on to the joke and started spelling the words they thought were on our list! (This sounds like something children would do, doesn’t it?) Like I said, we are having fun! We would love to hear from you, so send us some comments to the blog. It is time to get some sleep and get ready for another spectacular day tomorrow.