Easter in the Holy Land

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Unfortunately my cameras battery died so I don’t have too many pictures to share. So all of my pictures you do see are from other people.  But don't worry, you still all get to read my words. Luckily for you all, my writing is highly entertaining. 

The day after we got home from Galilee, it was Good Friday. We got to participate in the festivities. We all headed down to the old city to walk the Via Dolorosa with the thousands of other people. It was pretty packed and crowded. 

 

Everyone walks the path that Christ did as he carried his cross to Golgotha. There are stations along the way where certain parts of the story happened.

 But in the end, it kinda just turned out to be a bunch of people walking to the church of the Holy Sepulcher.

People. People everywhere. 

The next day, a bunch of us went on a walk to the Orson Hyde park... 

 and then Gwen got engaged! Her boyfriend flew out here and was waiting for her in the park. 

This was the first time they had seen each other since before their missions and he proposed in the first minute of their reunion. Pretty crazy.

The next morning was Easter, so we decided to the Garden Tomb Easter morning service. We rose bright and early to get seats. Like 4:30 early. 

Then we sat and waited in line. 

The service was actually really fun. They had a Christian Rock Band and the lyrics were on the program so we all got to sing along. In between the songs there were speakers who read the resurrection story from the scriptures, and one main speaker- a pastor. The pastor quoted “Troy” in his talk. If that doesn't give you some sort of indication of what kind of service this was I don't know what will. 

We did a bunch of other things these past two weeks, but we are starting to take less and less pictures so I will just give you a quick bullet point list. I have seriously never taken/been in so many pictures in my life. It's getting exhausting. 

Thing done and places visited: 

• The priestly blessing at the western wall
• southwest temple mount excavations
• the burnt house
• the whole museum
• a bunch of different churches in the old city
• a Haredi Jew neighborhood
• the town of John the Baptist

 Then we had a talent show! It was so fun and entertaining. Everyone's act was so well done and fun to watch. 

But I mean, the best one of the night was probably this trio who sang songs and danced. 

We sang parts of , I Won't Give Up by Jason Mraz 

Steal My Girl by One Direction

Baby by Justin Bieber

and "Tel Hazor"-a song made up by one of our professors. 

We brought down the house. 

This pasts weeks day field trip included a trip to Masada.  

here it is. 

not really, but you can see part of it in the top left corner. 

Then we went to the Dead Sea and it was so fun! I thought I would want to get in and then get right out (because of the saltiness) but the sensation of floating without trying was so cool that we all stayed in for a long time 

It was so salty that when I got out there was a layer of salt film on my body. 

Then we went a waterfall. Since we weren't allowed to go into the waterfall (as shown by the fence) we decided that we would make our own pool by damming the river. 

It was also Holy Fire last weekend. Which is an Orthodox ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Which is pretty much thousands of people lighting bunches of candles in the church. We got a birds eye view by going on the roof of the church and looking down into the courtyard. We also went into the main dome and looked down into the church. It was super cool. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it. You will just have to trust me. Trying to leave the city after the ceremony was so incredibly crowded-worse than Good Friday. There was major shoving and pushing going on, but we were luckily able to break free. Then it started pouring rain so we ran all the way home, and right when we got back it stopped raining. Figures. 

We are also officially done with classes! It was finals this week so everything is now officially done. Thank goodness. 

We all went out to the Garden of Gethsemane when all of our classes were done.

I now officially only have three days left. It is so crazy I can't believe it. These last days we will walk through the last week of the saviors life and then we fly home on Wednesday night. I really can't believe it.