A Passage to Israel (and Palestine)

Well, friends, I am home! I had the experience of a lifetime--3.5 months in Jordan, followed by two full weeks in Israel and Palestine. However, because of my internet situation, I was not always able to post everything I wanted, especially at the end. Therefore, I have had some requests to finish  things off--with more pictures! I hope everyone will indulge me with another couple of posts, in which I attach a few more---hopefully interesting!---photos of the Holy Land.

Our first day in Israel, we took a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee. It is smaller than I expected--much smaller than the Dead Sea, but still big enough to be a wild ride in a storm:) It was one of my favorite experiences there.

Would you have believed that this was the Middle East?

 The entire region (Jordan and Israel both)
experienced an unusual amount of rain that fall. I cursed it roundly in 2 languages while I was in Jordan (taxis become scarce when it rains in Jordan, and waiting on the street in the pouring rain for 20 minutes waiting for a taxi to get to school is مش كويس كتير) but we were rewarded with unprecedented, green loveliness and powerful waterfalls in northern Israel. This photo is from the land of Dan, near the headwaters of the Jordan River. We felt like we had stumbled into a Mediterranean paradise.

This crazy crew went geocaching in Israel. This is the geocache that we found on the Mount of the Precipice, where an angry crowd of Nazerenes tried to push Christ off after they rejected His teachings. "A prophet has no honor in His own country!" Also, we are looking down on the Jezreel Valley, where Barak and Deborah swept the opposing armies out of Israel in the Book of Judges, and Jael killed the commander by sticking a tent stake through his head.

Ever heard of a battle at a little place called Armageddon? This is the place!

One of my bucket list goals was to eat a falafel sandwich from a street vendor in Jerusalem...

When Christ says that a camel must go through the eye of a needle for a rich man to go to heaven, this is what He meant!

We met these darling girls at the Mt of Temptation outside Jericho. They were on a field trip from Ramallah, and they thought that 6 foot tall, Arabic-speaking, redheaded Lindsay was amazing!

When the Christian children get home from school, they take to the streets of Jerusalem!

Far Far Away on Judea's Plains

   First of all, let  me set the record straight--there are no plains in Judea. The land is actually known as the "Judean Hills." I have pictures--but I can't upload them at this time. Since my last post was brief, I am including a piece of a report I had to write:

         As I had feared/suspected, the" little town of Bethlehem" was as full of an ambivalent mix of turmoil, pain, history, and magic as is Jerusalem. Perhaps this is because the cities are so close together—a 20 minute bus ride is all it takes to get from "Royal David's City" to his capital. My comment may be overdramatic, but everything was a strange mix of the peaceful Christmas or Palestinian message and the conflict.

• The separation wall is sterile cement on one side, but the other side is covered with lovely, politically-charged graffiti.
• The large "countdown to Christmas" sign in Manger Square is posted on a building next to a large mosque, complete with minaret.  
• The Nativity scene I purchased features a happy Holy Family on one side, and on the other, a separation wall with Wise Men trying to get in.
• My picture with the large Christmas tree in Manger Square features several rifle-wielding soldiers.
• A week before Christmas, I spent the day in Bethlehem and--I am actually not supposed to disclose full details until I return to the US. Remind me then.

           Yet, I believe that this conflict and contrast perhaps provides a more apt Christmas message than Santa Claus and families gathering for food, or even than sharing and generosity. After all, "when Joseph went to Bethlehem," the land was disputed land. There were conquerors and soldiers and weapons, radicals and zealots and religious extremists then, too. To cap it all off, it was tax season!

    And the government was getting in the way of life then as now—yesterday, we heard from a woman whose home is walled on three sides by the new wall. She once lived on Main Street, but it has now become a secluded ghost town. She waited out 40 days of shelling inside her home with her 5 children, but even when the Intifada stopped, her husband's business (he was a car mechanic) crashed. Now, she makes handicrafts to survive and support her family. (She actually makes lovely blessing gowns, among other things. If you would like to support her, order online at www.baptismgarment.com).

        Joseph was very likely a stonecutter, called upon to move to Severus to help build the new city. He was a newlywed, not a wealthy man, and he had to take his wife far away from her friends and family, to have her child in a strange land in a dark cave inhabited by sheep because Caesar Augustus said so. The Holy Land has not changed all that much—people still knock down other people's houses and build on top of them using the rubble. And the people still need "a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."  

O Little Town of Bethlehem

    I was very excited to visit Bethlehem just a week before Christmas. It's a nice city, much closer to Jerusalem than I had expected--20 minutes by bus, perhaps, if you're American and do not get stopped at the wall checkpoint (3 hours if you're Palestinian, of course, but that is another story). It was nice to see all the Christmas decorations, including the Christmas tree and the Christmas countdown at Manger Square. We visited the Church of the Holy Nativity, which was a beautiful, lovely experience.

   We also went to Shepard's Field and heard from Sahar Qumseyeh, the Relief Society president of Jerusalem. I am running out of power now, so here are the photos of Jerusalem and Bethlehem:

     

Today in Jerusalem

   I have been feeling guilty for weeks now about not posting anything, and this will be a sad and boring post because technological constraints prevent my adding any photos, but I hope you'll forgive me---I feel like doing this at all is quite brave because my blogging dashboard here translated itself into Hebrew and it took four tries to even figure out how to add a new post!
  So, Item 1, I have spent the last week and a half in the great (but small---I am still trying to get used to distances, or the lack thereof, in the Middle East) state of Israel. I spent my last week in dear Jordan in a flurry of packing, taking finals, saying sad goodbyes, and last-minute choir rehearsals. And then, in an arduous (in my opinion) but unusually simple (my professor's) process, we headed west.
   In Israel, I have done the following:

• Gone wading in the Mediterranean Sea, overlooked by Roman aqueduct ruins
• Chatted with some Israeli/Americans about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict while in the ruins of the magical ancient city of Ceserea
• Seen the walls of Jericho
• Been to Armeggedon (it's gorgeous, actually--a lovely green hilly country)
• Ascended the steps of the ruins of a real fake temple in Dan (the one King Jeroboam built so that his new Israelite nation could properly worship a--surprise! Golden calf)
• Taken a bath (I felt really guilty for using that much water in the West Bank, but we hadn't seen a bathtub in months!)
• Slept in a convent in Nazereth
• Met a charming nun in Nazereth. She gave us a tour of the ruined Crusader castle/Byzantine church/1st century house underneath her convent. She kept telling us not to touch anything.
• Spent two hours chatting with some Israeli Arab Christians at the big fashion mall at Nazereth
• Hiked around the headwaters of the Jordan River
• Swam in the Sea of Galilee ("I swam today where Jesus walked. So I guess I've got a long ways to go!")
• Driven through an Israeli West Bank checkpoint
• Contemplated mass suicide at Masada
• Got stuck in traffic in the new old city of Tel Aviv
• Eaten some of the best food any Arab could imagine
• And much, much more---pictures and explanatory stories to follow, in she' Allah

   However, since last Thursday, we've been in Jerusalem!!

    The Jerusalem Center is basically like a cross between a Middle Eastern palace, BYU, and Hogwarts, so far as I am concerned. My friend and I even found a Room of Requirement the other day. Our adventures in Jerusalem have included:

• Dancing with some very kind Jews at the Western Wall after sundown on Shabbat
• Getting yelled at by some less kind Israelis for consenting to listen to some left-wing political views
• Eating the best falafel sandwich I have ever eaten in the Old City, near the Damascus Gate
• Playing the best organ in the Middle East, thank you Dr. Harris!

Kidnapped By Syrian Refugees!

     I had some internet problems last week, so I could not blog, but we'll try again today. Also, as for the security update: currently it looks like our trip to Israel and Palestine will proceed as planned. We will hopefully leave next Friday morning.
    And now, here's a quick overview of a couple of recent adventures:

My issues class decided to have an unofficial cultural immersion day in class:) Here we are in full native dress, learning to dance the Dibka

• Last Monday: LDS Charities, BYU Jordan, and a group of Syrian refugees who who all have psychological training have teamed up for a number of different projects. For instance, we have all participated in a language exchange with some of the Syrian teenagers who are stuck in Amman. This Monday, however, our professor's wife let several of us come to a children's event. Basically, we played with the children, chatting with them and watching them draw  pictures. We even all got our faces painted with symbols of Syrian nationalism, which was interesting. The children were charming, although it was strange to think about what they had been through. For instance, one lovely little girl with soft dark curls drew her home in Syria, but in addition to the house, the trees, the little stick-figure child, and the smiling sun she drew, she added a large green helicopter, shooting fireballs down onto the little house.There were other sad things: for the last half hour, they reconvened for an activity that I can only describe as a cross between a Primary meeting and a political rally. The children all sang songs and chanted about freedom, Syria, the will of Allah, and, most importantly, the fall of "the regime." One little girl started crying half-way through her song. She finished singing about the beauty of Syria with tears streaming down her cheeks, and one of the adults whispered to us that her mother had been killed by the regime before they were able to flee Syria.

• 

  Here we all are with some of our Syrian friends who we have done lots of projects with

   
• That Thursday, we all went to a Syrian refugee camp in the north of Jordan. It was a very small, very nice one (we had originally planned to go to Zaateri--the big, new one, but they were having too many riots). We put on a puppet show in Jordanian Arabic---I played the mother puppet in this one. And here's the second one that the other group put on (You can actually see me the entire time on this one---I sat with the children doing crowd control, and my blue turban--all the girls had to be fully modest to go, which means hair was covered---is at the bottom of the screen:) Anyway, it was one of the funnest things we have done! While we were waiting for the second puppet show to start, I saw a little girl come in, and I started playing with her with my puppet. Soon, I had approximately 12 little Syrian girls sitting around me, plus one little boy on my lap, and we were all chatting away about the puppet show and what they wanted to be when they grew up. For crowd control, I sat with 2 children on my lap, and when the show was finished a group of five of them grabbed my hands and tried to pull me away to go visit their houses. I protested and said the bus was going to leave soon (which was true), so they escorted me to the bus. Several students had to stand at the doors of the bus to prevent the children from boarding, and they all waved and ran after the bus when it started to pull away.

This is our Irbid branch, where we have attended church for months. Yesterday was our last day, so we took a group photo. The senior missionaries who are called to the branch are sitting in front. Also, I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday, which was terrifying. It went really well though, and I will never be nervous for a talk back in the States again, having had to do one in Arabic:)