Shellie Day 3 and 4: Gethsemane, Garden Tomb

Day 3 with Shellie was the Sabbath, which is Saturday here in Israel for the LDS branches.  Some of the smaller groups meet on Sundays, such as in Bethlehem.

We spent some time before church at some sites on the Mount of Olives within walking distance.  

The Church of All Nations commemorates the Savior suffering under the weight of our sins in the Garden of Gethsemane.  The church is dark, with a starry ceiling and images of olive trees and thorns.  The garden outside is lovely with centuries-old trees.  This a quiet, contemplative place.  

Up the hill is the chapel of Dominus Flevit, "The Lord Wept," commemorating the Savior looking out over the land and sorrowing for the destruction which he knew would come and for the lack of righteousness among the people.

 This area has been a place of burial for millenia.

After church we visited for a short time with Sahar Qumsiyeh, our friend who currently serves in the England London South mission.  (You can follow her adventures at http://saharqumsiyeh.blogspot.co.il/)

The olive processing equipment is a good follow-up to our visit to Gethsemane.

Carrie accompanied Shellie and I to the Garden Tomb, then to the Pool of Bethesda by St. Anne's Cathedral.

The cistern at the Pool of Bethesda still contains water.  But we didn't see anything troubling the water.
 
St. Anne's church commemorates Mary's mother.  It is cared for by a group of French priests.

We headed home by way of St. Stephen's or Lion's gate.  The walk home was quite brisk because we were trying to beat the sunset.

The next day, Sunday, we dropped off Shellie at the Bethlehem checkpoint to go to church with Sahar.  It was a small meeting and a very different experience for Shellie, but she enjoyed it and afterwards went to the Church of the Nativity and Manger Square.  We picked her up and went to straight to Galilee, passing by Jericho on the way up the Jordan Valley Road.  Again, we had to try to get most of the way there before dark.

 We enjoyed the hospitality of Ray and Bobbe Graham, and woke up the next morning ready to explore Galilee.

Shellie Day 2: Qumran, Masada, Dead Sea

The Mount of Olives is about 2600 feet above sea level, and the Dead Sea is 1384 feet below sea level.  So halfway down the winding canyon there is a pullout where you can celebrate being the same elevation as the Mediterranean.  

 Here is the view from Qumran with Cave 4 in the background, where the greatest quantity and poorest preserved collection of Dead Sea scrolls were found.   We also saw many mikvot for ritual immersion, a dining room, and a scriptorium where the scrolls were copied and thus preserved by Jewish separatists around the time of Herod.

 We ascended to the top of Masada by tram.  You can see the cables and the dizzying height behind Shellie.

Herod expanded and beautified this hilltop fortress in the grandest way possible.  This palace at the northernmost tip of the fortress had faux columns and frescoes, and you can imagine the lavish way he would have eaten and entertained guests in his warm winter getaway.  There were storehouses, cisterns, and pigeous houses.

Model of the Water System

 Later, Jewish revolutionaries rebelled against Rome and occupied Masada, building a Synagogue and mikvot.

 In the location of the synagogue today a Jewish scribe or Sofer copies the Torah and stopped to chat with us.

He gave Shellie a piece of paper which reads something like, "The Lord bless you with peace."  Shellie absolutely loved this blessing.  In fact the day before she had received a blessing from an elderly Jewish man who handed her a piece of red string, then held up a Torah to her forehead and said something in Hebrew.  

 After the Jewish zealots, some Christian hermits lived up here.  This pile of rocks is the remnant of one hermitage.

 The weather was very lovely, maybe 60s in Jerusalem and 70s at Masada.  We got a kick out of this sign saying drinks were 50 miles away.  Actually only 50 meters.  We ate at a Kosher McDonalds with no cheeseburgers.

 Back at home, we ran to the beginning of our road to snap a photo of Shellie by our sign.

Aunt Shellie's Visit Day 1: Jerusalem Old City

It's taken a while to get around to posting this, but today's the day.  Emily is home sick and all my appoinments have dwindled.

We had a wonderful time with my sister Shellie Brown last December.  She came on December 16th so she could return to Virginia for Christmas with her husband Jason and 5 adorable kids.  Shellie was such a trooper and barely showed any signs of jet lag.  I guess motherhood had prepared her well for going without a lot of sleep!  We took her all over the country for 6 busy days, and tried to give her a taste of the best this land has to offer.

Day One we focused on the Old city.  We went on the Temple Mount/Haram es-Sharif in the morning, enjoying some nice views.  Here is the old city seen from the Mount of Olives, which has millenial importance  for Jews and Latter-day saints.

Mormons believe the Bible to be the word of God, and we had quite a few Jewish friends during our childhood in Pennsylvania, so the Jewish and Christian sites were very important to Shellie.

Below left, you can see in the top right corner the steps leading up to Herod's temple complex, surrounded by mikvot and buildings from many early time periods.  A worshipper back in the time of King Herod would immerse themself in water to become ritually pure, then ascend one set of stairs through a tunnel to go up to offer their animal in sacrifice.  The stairs were alternating wide and narrow, so one would have to slow down, pay attention, and not rush up them thoughtlessly.  Afterwards, they would come down a different tunnel and set of stairs.  A person in mourning would go up the down staircase so as to receive condolences.

This is a inside view from the top of the temple mount looking down toward where those tunnels would emerge on the top of the structure.  The tunnel still exists and leads down to areas of Muslim worship, so therefore only Muslims are allowed to enter, as is the case with the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Below  is the southwest corner of the temple mount, from which the shofar would announce the Sabbath back in the time of Jesus, and from which Jesus may have been tempted.




  Here is the inside view of the eastern Golden Gate of the old city, sealed since Ottoman times.

It is always amazing to see how spacious the temple mount is.  The Dome of the Rock is huge but the total surface area of the platform it sits upon is 35 acres.

 After the Temple Mount, we circled back around to the Western Wall and took the Kotel Tunnel tour beneath the streets of Jerusalem.  So much history.  You can take a virtual tour at http://english.thekotel.org/VirtualTour.asp.
Here is a photo of the closest location to the previous Holy of Holies.  Jews pray here and stick prayer notes in the wall just as they do at the Western Wall, but in smaller numbers because of the confined space.  What you are seeing is the former archway filled in with rubble.  In 1967 there was an attempt by Jewish archaeologists to penetrate through, but excavation was quickly stopped because it would further destabilize the political situtation.  So instead of tunneling into the temple mount, archaeologists tunneled along the edges of the Temple Mount, parallel to the structure.

Emerging from the Kotel, tunnel, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and other sites in the Old City.

Ever the fashion maven, Shellie was on the hunt for fabulous headwear.  This friendly lady below told Shellie she probably couldn't achieve the same look because the scarf had been bought online, and because she would need to have a lot more hair.

When we stopped to get falafel and schawerma, we got the biggest surprise of our visit.  There at the table next to us was our friend from high school, Abbi Friedman Perets, with her husband and five children.  She lives about 2 hours away and had been in Jerusalem for two days.  What an amazing turn of events!  Shellie and I couldn't have planned it if we had tried. 

Our kids were still in school that week, but the Perets family were out of school for Hannukah.  Shellie helped bring the Hannukah spirit with presents for each person for the remaining days of Hannukah.  We pulled out our 2 shekel menorah from Ace Hardware and played some Hannukah songs off youtube.  That and some donuts rounded out our quick celebration, and then we all needed some rest after a busy day.