I am sooo Blessed

I was making an album today of all my favorite IBEX photos. If there is one piece of valuable advice I could give to future Ibexim it would be to keep track of your photos. Don't let them build up on your computer in folders with no names, because I promise you a week after you upload them you would remember half the things you took pictures of!

So anyway I was looking through all the pictures I have taken so far and it was so strange for me to look back at our first field one month ago. I hardly knew most of the people in my group, let alone thought I could be friends with them. I was confused, jet lagged, and totally clueless to what the semester would hold for me.

And I now I sit here, one month into my study aboard adventure, and I realize just how blessed I am. I am so blessed to be here in Israel. To see where my Lord walked, and to learn about what he did. I mean, I go to class and learn about Jesus healing the lame man at the Pools of Bathzeda and then I do there........for crying out loud, how cool is that!!!

I am so blessed by EVERYONE in my group. These people are so amazing, and I thank God that He saw fit to put me with them. I have so much to learn from these people, and am benefiting so much from their friendship!

My professors are amazing men of God, who care so deeply about their students. I love the fact that they are so approachable. I love that I can spend a Saturday afternoon with my teacher and then laugh about it Monday in class! I love that they so graciously let us into their homes, and share their families with us! I LOVE playing with their kids, and learning from their wives.

I AM SO BLESSED!

And yet I constantly find myself worrying about trivial, trivial things. Like, what I'm going to wear, and how I look, and how much I would kill for a cheeseburger, and how small my room is. I should just be happy to be here!

Pray that God will continue to show me how contrite and stupid these things are which worry me. Pray that myself, my entire being would be wrapped up in Him alone. Pray that I would know that I am blessed!

Valentine's Day, God's Way

When? Febuary 14, 2007
The place? Shiloh
Who? IBEX Spring 07
A Valentine's Day I will not soon forget!

This past Wednesday we boarded our bus at 7:00am (I KNOW!!!) and headed for the Mt. of Olives, just one stop on our day of seeing routes which approach Jerusalem.

The Mount was breath-taking as always, and full of history. We walked the streets Jesus would have taken when he came from Bethany to Jerusalem for Passover, the very streets where Jesus mounted a donkey and triumphantly rode into the city while poeple chanted Hosanna. We stood on a lookout and read about David fleeing from his rebellious son Absalom barefoot and weeping over the Mount of Olives. We went to the spot were Jesus wept over a city who did not recognize thier savior had come, a city who today continues to look in vain for the one who will save them. And finally we spoke about how the final approach to Jerusalem will be when the Lord returns and spilts the Mount in two from East to West.

Bethlehem was our next stop, which is only about 25 minuets outside of Jerusalem but takes longer to get into due to it being under Palestinian control. A huge stone wall surrounds the city and all traffic must stop at a check point before entering or exiting. The wall had graffi all over it with sayings like, "Mr. President tear down this wall," and "To exist is to resist". This was the coolest thing about Bethlehem.

I dont really know what to say about Bethlehem, except its the last place on earth I would ever want to have a child, and perhaps thats the way it was when Jesus was born. Its dirty, busy, polluted, cramped, and smells bad. I never want to go back......ever! I just want to keep the nice picture of sleepy little Bethlehem I have tucked away in my mind and not think about what it is today.

Next we went to Solomon's Pools.......they were pretty cool, but I dont have alot to say about them, except that as we were leaving these nasty little Arab children were screaming at us.

Now to my favorite part of the day......Shiloh! Can anyone tell me what happened at Shiloh? Shiloh is where Hannah offers her prayer to the Lord and where she later gives birth to Samuel, but it gets better. Shiloh is also where the Tabernacle stood for 300 years, but wait theres more. Shiloh, most importantly is where the most romantic Valentines Day story happened, which was approaite since we were there on Valentines day.

Shiloh is where the Benjaminites "pick up" their extra wives, since they were not allowed to get wives from Mizpah. So knowing that there was an anual festival in Shiloh were the girls all came out and danced they were instructed to hide in the vineyards and watch, and then rush the women each man taking a wife for himself and carrying her back to Benjamin.

So in the spirit of being at the actual site where this happened, and because it was Valentines Day, and it a truly romantic story, we re-enacted it. All the girls joined hands in a big circle and pranced around (after being told by Todd that our techno rave dance stlye was not bibical) and waited for the boys to come charging. I have to say it was a little scary when a pack of guys are running at you screaming. Only a few, studly men carried some of the girls away, but it was still good for a few laughs.

And the lesson from all this........who needs Master's when you have Shiloh!!

Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Sorry I have not blogged in a while, things have been really busy here. We went on our Jerusalem Approaches field trip yesterday, but I thought before I blogged about that one I should tell you about Benjamin.

Benjamin, oh Benjamin.......how do I even start?

If someone had told me how this field trip would have ended up I dont know if I would have beleived them, let alone gone on it!

Febuary is the rainy season here in Israel. And already we have seen alot of rain! I cant even tell you how much I miss the sunny California beaches!

Anyway, rain creates mud. Wet, sticky, gross mud.

So on Wednesday morning we wake up early to go on our field trip and it is raining! Now this wouldnt have been so bad, but our trip that day was all Juean wilderness!

Our first stop was Gezer, which is about 35 min outside of Jerusalem by the Ajialon Valley. That may mean nothing to you, but here in Israel valley's are not fun places to be when it is raining.

Our professor Todd usually has the bus park at the end of this long road off the hightway at Gezer and the group walks out to the site, but our bus driver Roshe said he could take us down the road right to our site! How sweet!

We looked around the site for about an hour and then met our bus at the bottom of the road where he had just dropped us off, little did we know that the next time we got on the bus again it would be two hours later and on a differant bus.

First, he tried to go up the hill with everyone in the bus, which didnt work. Then he tried it with everyone off the bus, which didnt work either. Then we tried putting sticks and rocks over the mud (which was about 6-8 inches deep) to help the bus over the mud. You guessed it.....didnt work! So then we dicided we would take another route to get back on the highway, but low and behold there was mud on this route also.

Our most desperate and final attempt was for our guys to push the bus out of the mud. They would push it for about 10 feet and then it would get stuck agian, so they would push it for another 10 feet. Sadly, since the highway was still a mile away this strategy just wasnt going to work.

We boarded the bus for the final time to grab all our stuff and head for the highway where a new bus would meet us.

Since the new bus couldnt come and meet us where the old bus was stuck we had to walk, for about a mile, in the thickest mud I have ever seen in my life! People literally got stuck in the and had to be pulled out without thier shoes. There were probably a dozen or more people waking barefoot.

After about 30 min of this we finally made it to the road and into our new bus. Last I heard our poor bus driver was stuck in that mud until late that night.

My shoes may never recover........but it was pretty much the most awesome trip ever!

Another Shabbat In Israel

Saturday's here in Israel are Shabbat, also known as the Sabbath. This is a holy day set apart for the Jewish people for rest. Among many other things no one is allowed to cook, press elevator numbers, change the television station, switch on or off a light. There are ways to get around these rules, such as turning your TV on to the station of your choice the day before sunset, and leaving it on until sunset the following day.

But here at IBEX Shabbat is the day we go to church. We attend a small congregation of believers in Jerusalem called Jerusalem Assembly. The pastor, Meno, will speak for a couple of minuets in Hebrew and then someone will translate into English, while others in the back speak in Russian. It's REALLY hard to pay attention. By the time the English part of the message gets around I have already forgotten what the last point was. And the service lasts for 2 and half hours! I counted 7 of us IBEX students asleep yesterday.

After this the bus will drop whichever students want to stay in Jerusalem for the day off by Jaffa Gate, where it meets us again at 4pm to go back to the Moshav. These are really fun times, because you don't have a schedule of things you have to see, or are racing to keep up with Todd (our professor who takes on field trips). You just get to hang out with great friends!

This Shabbat we decided that we would visit a Protestant Cemetery which our professor Randy told us about. Now since it's Shabbat alot of things are closed (The normal work day here is Sun-Friday) Randy told us however that if the desk to JUC (Jerusalem University College, who controls access to the cemetery) was open you could sweet talk your way in, since they do not let anyone in without a reservation. Or if the desk was close, as it is on Shabbat, there was a whole in the fence where you could sneak in.

So after a little exploring, and many wrong turns we finally found the road which we thought led to the gate. But in order to get there we had to walk up this really steep hill with barb wire, then slide down the side of the slope, then climb back up the hill. Finally we made it to where the whole was. There was, thankfully, a strategically placed chair (from others before us) which we used to prop ourselves up and then climb through, on our knees a small opening in the barb wire fence. It was intense, to say the least.

The cemetery, however, was well worth it. It was, by far, the coolest cemetery I have ever seen in my life. The graves were all in English because it is a protestant cemetery (alot of the people buried there were British, but had come to work in Israel. Many of them were Excavators who found alot of the sites we know of today). The dates on tombs ranged from 1820 at the earliest to 1999 at the latest. The whole place was horribly overgrown and un cared for, which added to its coolness! Some of graves had even been dug up and there was just an empty plot. As we were looking around and taking pictures it started pouring. How cool is it to be in a super old Cemetery in Jerusalem that you snuck into and it starts pouring! I could have died! (no pun intended)

This, by far is the coolest thing I have done here!