The Beach at Tel Aviv, Jordan!, and the Fourth of July

This has been one of the most fun weeks I think I've had since coming to the Jerusalem Center.  On Sunday, I went to Tel Aviv with a group of people to go to the beach.  We left at about nine, so we got there around ten, and we just hung out on the beach until about five in the evening.  It was so great!  The weather was perfect!  It was plenty hot, and the water was warm.  And the waves were a pretty decent size too.  It was one of the best times I've ever had at the beach.  I also didn't even get sunburned, so that was great too.  Then at five, we headed out to find some dinner, and we got some food and ice cream.  It was really good.  And then we just walked around the city and then watched the sunset on a lookout point until our bus came to pick us up.  We left at about eight that night.  It was a really great day and definitely well-deserved after a tough finals week the week before.

On Monday we left for Jordan.  We crossed the border over into Jordan, and luckily that didn't take too long.  I was surprised at how underwhelming the Jordan River was.  It's just a tiny little river now.  Not even really worthy to be called a river really.  Anyway, after we crossed the border, we visited Mt. Nebo.  That is where Moses looked out and saw the promised land for the first time.  The tradition is that he died there, but no one knows where his tomb is.  But modern-day revelation says that Moses was translated.  I wish I could say the view from Mt. Nebo was cool, but it wasn't really because it was so hazy on the day we were there. But I'm sure after a rainstorm it would be really neat.  While we there, it was neat to talk about modern-day prophets that can see "the promised land" and how we need to follow their guidance in order to get there.  After Mt. Nebo, we visited Madaba, which is just a city along the Jordan River in Jordan.  There we visited St. George's Greek Orthodox Church.  It was a very pretty church, but the coolest part of it was that there is a map on the floor in that church of the Holy Land from the Byzantine Era.  And it has all of these Greek inscriptions on it to label where different things were.  It really is a cool resource to know where things were located a long time ago.  After that, we drove to Machaerus, which is a palace that Herod Antipas lived in.  Here, he had John the Baptist beheaded.  The palace overlooks the Dead Sea.  The ruins were pretty neat, and it was neat to talk about John the Baptist there and the legacy he left for Christ so that He could start His ministry.   

Now this is where our trip to Jordan starts to get really funny.  So after Machaerus, we just had to drive down to Petra to spend the night there so we could go to Petra the next day.  We had about a three hour drive, but it ended up taking about seven.  After we'd been on the road for about an hour, our bus broke down because of a problem with the clutch right next to the remains of an old Roman road.  So that was pretty cool.  So they sent us another bus.  So we then transferred all of our suitcases, bottled water (the water in Jordan is nasty) and other stuff we'd brought with us to bus #2.  We got on the bus, and we drove for about ten minutes when that bus broke down as well.  And we just happened to break down next to this awesome old church that had been a place for pilgrims to stop on their way to the Holy Land.  The ruins were really well preserved, and there were some awesome mosaics there that we wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise.  And we got to see the sun set there.  So they sent us another bus after we had been waiting around a couple of hours.  So we then transferred all of our suitcases, bottled water, and other stuff we'd brought with us to bus #3.  We were able to get down to Petra on that bus that night, but we didn't get there until about 11 at night.  We still got dinner at the hotel really late at night, and everyone was really tired and hungry by the time we got there.  But no one complained.  We all had a lot of fun being stuck out in the wilderness together.  And it was awesome to see those extra sites that we weren't planning on.  

The next day, we walked over to Petra from our hotel, and we spent most of the day there.  It was so cool!  It reminded me of a lot of being in southern Utah.  Petra is an ancient city that was completely carved out of sandstone by the Nabbateans in about 300 BC.  It was really fun to climb and hike around there all day, but it was really HOT!  The best part of the day (besides being at Petra) was that we were allowed to wear shorts there.  That was so nice because I think I might have died if I'd had to wear pants.  We also got to ride camels there in front of the treasury of the city, which was really fun!  I also saw the monastery there that was clear up in the mountains, and it was SO beautiful!  It was a breathtaking sight to see.  (Not the universal adjective kind of breathtaking though Dad.)  I had a lot of fun there, and it would be fun to go back someday.  I think one of the things that made it fun was that they didn't guide us around at all like we normally do at almost all of the sites we visit, but they just let us do whatever we wanted and go to whatever stuff we wanted to see because there was a lot to see.  We got there at about eight in the morning, and we left at three in the afternoon.

So after Petra, we got on the bus to head back up to Amman to see the rest of the sites on our trip.  Well, I guess we couldn't make the three-hour trip just three hours because guess what?  Our bus broke down again halfway through the drive.  So we stopped at a rest stop and waited there for an hour or so, so they could send another bus to us.  Haha!  The tour guides that were with us let us get a bunch of free snacks and drinks at the rest stop to make up for all the broken down buses that the tour company would pay for.  Finally another bus got there, so we transferred all of our suitcases, bottled water, and other stuff we'd brought with us to bus #4.  And still no one complained.  Everyone just had a good attitude, and we all just made as many jokes as we could about three buses breaking down on us in the desert.  It was really funny.  Then we drove back up to Amman that night, and we stayed the night there.  

The next day we visited the Amman Citadel on a new bus that they gave us, so by that point we were on bus #5, even though that one wasn't really a transition because we were just getting on from the hotel.  Amman Citadel is the site of Rabbah where Uriah the Hittite was killed in battle under the leadership of David's captain Joab.  Meanwhile, David was at home with Bathsheba.  There was a temple of Hercules there and a really pretty mosque.  It was a really cool place even though most of the ruins weren't from biblical times.  After that, we visited the Jabbok River.  It divides Ammon from Moab in biblical times.  There we talked about Jacob's vision of the ladder and about the Abrahamic covenant blessing all the people of the Earth.  It was really an awesome spiritual experience to sit there and know that Jacob saw an angel on the banks of that river somewhere on his way to visit Esau.  After that, we visited my favorite site of the whole trip, Jerash.  Jerash was a really awesome old Greek/Roman city that is sometimes thought to be Jershon in the Bible, but no one really knows.  There were the coolest ruins there of old columns and temples.  It had two theaters, a couple of roads, and temples to Zeus and Artemis there.  It was just so cool to go and explore the city.  I'd never been in a place like that before, and it was just beautiful.  I wish I could have seen it in its heyday.  After Jerash, we did something pretty different.  We visited the Royal Automobile Museum of the Hashemite Kings of Jordan.  There were a lot of cool cars there, but it just really wasn't my thing, and I don't think I knew enough to really appreciate what I was seeing.  But it was nice to do something inside in the air conditioning instead of just sweating outside while we look at ruins like we normally do.  Then we went back to the hotel and had a little while before dinner to just relax.  After that, we could go out into Amman, and my friend Amy saw a Subway, so we went in and got cookies because we realized we hadn't eaten an honest to goodness cookie in over two months.  It was so delicious!  We also found this guitar band that on the street.  They were really good, so we stayed there and listened to them for a while before we had to go back to our hotel.  

On our last day in Jordan, (the 4th of July and the day after the military coup d'etat in Egypt), we visited an ancient Roman theater in downtown Amman.  In the theater, we sang patriotic songs to America, and it was great.  :-)  We then drove over to the Jordan River at the place called "Bethany beyond Jordan" (or Betharbara as it is called in the New Testament) and talked about Christ's baptism. It was a really great spiritual experience.  We sang "Come Follow Me" there and the primary song called "Baptism" that talks about Christ being baptized by John the Baptist.  Even though it was stifling hot there, I could feel the Spirit testify that Christ really was baptized and that it's important to keep my own baptismal covenants.  I thought a lot about the picture I got at my baptism of the LDS version of Christ's baptism and how some nice person put a paper in there with my name and my baptism date and the sentence "I am following his example."  I have looked at that picture everyday since then (besides while I've lived here in Jerusalem) and how much that has helped me to remember not only when I got baptized but how it felt that day to get baptized and as I've gotten older to understand the promises I've made and renew each week when I take the sacrament.  I'm really glad we got to go there even though it was so hot and humid right down by the river.  

After that, we headed to the border crossing, which we got through in about an hour and drove back to Jerusalem.  When we got there, we had a big 4th of July dinner that the cafeteria threw for us.  We had hamburgers and hot dogs and apple pie.  It was all really good, but it just wasn't quite American food still.  And we all dressed up as people from American History.  It was really funny some of the costumes that people came up with.  After dinner was over, we all dispersed to do our homework for class the next day.  So there weren't any fireworks, but that's okay because fireworks go off at the hotel across the street from us pretty often because they have a lot of weddings there.  It was one of the best 4th of Julys of my life though.  It was really fun and very spiritually fulfilling.  

I forgot to say anything about the food in Jordan.  A typical meal was rice with some kind of vegetable soup sauce on top with some meat on the side.  All of the food was so good in Jordan.  It was way better than the food we ate in Turkey I think.  They had normal cake for dessert a lot of times, and we ate tons of pita bread and hummus.  So the food was great, and luckily I didn't get sick this time around like I did in Turkey. We didn't eat any fresh fruit besides watermelon and cantelope because we couldn't eat things that had been washed in their water.  

Overall it was a great week, and I really enjoyed all of it.  I think this trip was more fun than Turkey because I know everyone better now and was able to have more fun because I'm better friends with everyone now.  And this time, I felt like I was sharing experiences with people that I love rather than just a lot of acquaintances.  We get to go to Bethlehem on Monday, and I am really excited!

 The beach at Tel Aviv and our group walking towards it.

 More of the beach and the Mediterranean Ocean.  That building in the background is a minaret.  (Used to call the Muslims to prayer five times a day.)  It was very pretty.

 Part of the group I went with to Tel Aviv: Julie Kelson, Tyler Huff, Marissa Houdek, Tiffany Erickson, Kelby, Rose Kiernan, and Eric Dayhuff.  (I took this picture).

 Isn't this picture cool?  I look like I'm flying over the ocean!

 This is what Tel Aviv looks like right next to the beach.  I think it looked pretty European.

 A cool picture of the sunset at the beach.

The minaret all lit up at sunset as we were about to leave Tel Aviv.

 The desert of Jordan.  All of the green trees in the middle are the trees down in the valley of the Jordan River.  The rest of Jordan is just a dry, dry desert.

 A mosaic from the Christian church originally built for pilgrims on Mt. Nebo.  This is a picture of John the Baptist on top and a peacock on the bottom.

 More of the dry Jordan wilderness.  Whenever you hear the word "Edom" in the Bible, think of this.  That's where we spent most of our time as far as biblical geography goes.

 Me at the memorial stone at Mt. Nebo.  The traditional burial place for Moses, but we know from modern-day revelation that Moses was translated.

 A mosaic map of the Holy Land at St. George's Greek Orthodox church in Madaba, Jordan.  A lot of it is missing, but a lot of it is still there.  The big blue spot on the map with the blue line is the Dead Sea with the Jordan River flowing into it.

The outside of St. George's Greek Orthodox Church in Madaba.  Notice the "Chi" and "Ro" letters combined on the gate to let you know it is a Greek church.  (It's like their version of the cross.)

 Me inside of the church.  The mosaic map is where all the rest of the people in the picture are standing to the right.

The hilltop that Machaerus sits on.  It was quite a steep walk up there.

 Me on top of Machaerus.  Machaerus is the place where Salome (Herodias's daughter) danced for Herod Antipas and requested the head of John the Baptist from him.  It is possible that John the Baptist could have been imprisoned here, but no one will ever really know where he was in prison.  The ruins behind me are the remains of Herod's palace and fortification there.

 Machaerus overlooks the Dead Sea, and you can't really see it in this picture, but the Dead Sea is behind us in the distance. Left to right: me, Kjersten Ness, Nick Larsen, Tiffany Erickson, Julie Kelson, and Jasmine Gimenez.

 The plains of Moab in Jordan.  Whenever you hear the word "Moab" Bible, this is what you can picture.

 Me close to the entrance of Petra.  The whole thing reminded me a lot of southern Utah. Petra is one of the ancient wonders of the world.  It is an ancient city built by the Nabatteans in about 300 BC.  Petra means rock.  What a creative name right?  The whole city was carved out of sandstone.  

 Me in front of the treasury at Petra where the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed.  One of my friends even brought a whip and a hat to take Indiana Jones pictures.  Haha!

 They had camels to ride in front of the treasury, so I rode a camel.  It was really fun!

 Burial tombs found at Petra.

 Me climbing up to the "High Place" at Petra where they think a temple was.  There are more burial tombs behind me.

 A picture up at the high place at Petra.  This was a fun rock to climb up on and make funny poses on.  Behind me are some of the mountains that Petra was carved out of.

 Me being sacrificed by my friend Tyler at the altar at the High Place in Petra. Haha!

 Nathan Eyring, Breanne Ramsay, Rose Kiernan, and me at the main marketplace ruins of Petra.

 This was a temple/sanctuary place at Petra that is the closest real-live model of what Solomon's temple might have looked like.

 Me inside of the temple at Petra.

 There were camels and donkeys everywhere at Petra.  The people there kept trying to get us to buy their overpriced camel and donkey rides.

 Me at the monastery at Petra.  This place was actually way bigger and more impressive than the treasury at Petra.  This whole thing was carved out sandstone.  It was breathtaking to see.

 We had a bidet in our bathroom at our hotel in Amman.  Haha! I'd never seen one before.  I was planning on using it, but I just never had time to because every time I was going to the bathroom I had to hurry to get somewhere.

 Me, Amy Fillmore, and Alfredo Solar in our matching BYU shirts in downtown Amman.

 The city of Amman.  Everything there looks the same.  It reminds me of a nicer East Jerusalem.

 A mosque built by the Umayyads at the Amman Citadel.  The Amman Citadel is the place where they think Rabbah was.  (Rabbah is where David's army was fighting the Ammonites when David stayed at home and sinned with Bathsheba.)  There are some ruins from 1000 BC, but most of the stuff we saw was built much later than that.  This is the place where they think Uriah would have died in battle.

 Me inside the mosque at the citadel.  The carvings on the walls were pretty cool.

 A temple built to Hercules at the Amman Citadel.  Behind me you can see his fingers from a statue that used to be there.

 Me, Nick Larsen, and Cameron Scott flexing because we were at the temple of Hercules.

 Me and Amy Fillmore at the Jabbok River that divides Gilead from Ammon in Old Testament times.  Here, Jacob crossed the river in order to go meet his brother Esau after they hadn't seen each other for a long time.  He also had his vision of "Jacob's Ladder" somewhere near there.  Even though we had a really great spiritual experience there, the water in that river was nasty.  It looked like urine.

 Me at the entrance of Jerash.  Jerash is the place that is known as Jershon in the Bible.  Mostly though, it is a really neat old Roman city that was once a part of the Decapolis.  (A league of ten independent city-states during the Roman empire.)

 The main street and square of Jerash.

 The Nymphaeum of Jerash.  A nymphaeum is the place where they piped water to so people could draw water in the city.  They call it a nymphaeum because they believed that the nymphs controlled the water in Greek mythology.

 Me in front of a temple to Artemis found at Jerash.

 More of the temple of Artemis at Jerash.  It is one of the best preserved temple complexes in the world because the surrounding mount is still in good tact as well.

 Me on one of the streets of Jerash leading to the North Gate.

 The southern theater at Jerash.  There are two theaters in the city.  This one held several thousand people.

 A view overlooking the main city and square of Jerash.

 Me and Amy Fillmore in front of some fancy old car at the Royal Automobile Museum in Amman.

 At the Royal Automobile Museum with one of those crazy cutout board things.  Haha!

 Me, Eric Dayhuff, and Amy Fillmore on Rainbow Street in downtown Amman.  We found an awesome band of guitar players there called the Rainbow Street band.  They were really good, and it was fun to hear them play!

 The old theater in Amman.  This theater held several thousand people.

 Me entering the Odeon in Amman.

 A better view of the theater in Amman.  It was so big!  Since we were there on the fourth of July, we sang a lot of American patriotic songs.  It was really fun!

 The Odeon in Amman.  It's a smaller theater that was used for the upper class.

 Check out this hilarious sign!  "Jordanian hand grafts."  What?!?  Haha!

A bunch of us girls at a souvenir shop on our last day in Jordan.  We thought these headress things were pretty funny.  I would have bought one, but they were like $15 a piece.

 A traditional worship site from the Byzantine era where people used to come to commemorate the baptism of Christ.  It is not used anymore though.

 A beautiful mosaic on the trail to the Jordan River.

 A church dedicated to John the Baptist.  It's a really new church that's only 10 years old.  The Jordan River is just a little bit further down the trail.

 Another religious group that was at the river the same time as us.  They were having their own traditional service when we got there.

 Me at the Jordan River.  The water is really that gross looking just from the silt because the river doesn't flow very quickly.  They said this is about a tenth of what the river used to be like because now 90% of it is used for irrigation and drinking water.

 Stephen Clawson, me, and Amy Fillmore in front of the "duty-free"shop at the Jordanian border crossing with some cookies that we bought.  The cookies were called "digestive biscuits."  Haha!  What?!?  They are actually really good and just taste like graham crackers.

So then we thought it was really funny that we had "duty-free" digestive biscuits!  Hahaha!

Finals Week, Israel Museum, Humanitarian Activity

This week has been pretty bland compared to most of the other weeks I have had while I've been here.  We didn't go on a field trip this week because we took four finals and two midterms this week.  We just finished our Palestine, Judaism, language class, and the Old Testament.  So eight credits of the fifteen credits we take while we are here are finished.  The classes left to finish are New Testament, Ancient Near Eastern History, and our field trips class.  As I have finished all of these classes, just as I do every time I finish classes, I marvel at how much I have learned.  I know so much more about Islam, Judaism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, the history behind the Bible and the Holy Land, and the Old Testament.  

I feel very blessed to have come here and learn so much.  To see all the places I've seen so far and have the experiences I've had has really been amazing.  Probably the thing that I've been the most grateful about is that I have been able to get to know the Old Testament so much better than I ever did before.  If someone had asked me about two months ago if I wanted to take an Old Testament class at BYU, I would have told them no.  I have always just thought that the Old Testament was weird and foreign and just full of history that I didn't understand.  I wasn't really that excited about taking an Old Testament class here at the Jerusalem Center, but I figured it wouldn't be too bad because I would be in the place where all of the Old Testament took place.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  The Old Testament is awesome!!  I have loved reading and studying it each day while I've been here.  And as I have read it, studied it, and talked about it in class, I have come to know that the people in the Old Testament really had the truth of the Gospel just like we do today.  It's not in the same form of course, but those people still had the Plan of Salvation, revelation from prophets, temple worship, covenants to keep, and commandments that they needed to follow in order to get back to Heavenly Father.  Even though when first reading the Old Testament, it might seem like the Lord is really harsh, if you really study the Old Testament, it really is amazing how loving and merciful the Lord because of how many chances he gives people to repent and do better.  (Example: the kingdom of Israel had SO many warnings and chances to repent before it was scattered by the Assyrians attacking in 732 BC and 721 BC).  After taking an ancient near eastern history course alongside the Old Testament, I feel like I can understand so much more about the timeline of what is going on in the book.  I also feel like I can understand so much more of Isaiah when I read it now because of that.  

The other really awesome thing about the Old Testament is that it contains so many revelations about the latter days.  My favorite new scripture that I have discovered this semester from taking the Old Testament is in Jeremiah.  Jeremiah saw our day, and this is what he had to say about it: 

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Jeremiah 31:31-33).

I feel like this scripture encompasses so many important principles.  It is talking about when Christ comes to fulfill the Law of Moses, and it also refers to Joseph Smith restoring the Gospel.  Both times the Lord is starting a new covenant with the House of Israel.  I had never thought much about the part of my patriarchal blessing that tells me I am part of the House of Israel, but really this is what the Lord is promising: that I will have the chance to make temple covenants (putting his law in my heart like the scripture says) and become a part of God's people.  It really is such an amazing promise.  I feel as if I have come to know Christ so much better just through studying the Old Testament.  I don't ever really think I knew it before, but after this experience, I now know that Jesus Christ really was the Jehovah of the Old Testament.  He is a merciful and loving god, and the people of the Old Testament were invited to come to know God through knowing Jesus Christ through the Law of Moses.  And as a result of coming to know Christ and our Heavenly Father through following the commandments now, we can become something even greater.  The Old Testament really does teach that we can come to know God through His son.  It is truly a great message that isn't new news, but it still applies to us today.  And we can come to know Christ and Heavenly Father so much better through the Old Testament because it is the story of the Lord's interaction with His covenant people, which people anyone can become a part of today through the restoration of the Gospel.  

So even though most of my week has been consumed with studying and taking tests, I did do a couple of fun things this week.  On Sunday, I went to the Israel museum, which is the premier museum in the world for biblical history artifacts.  There was so much cool stuff that I saw there.  I saw gates that Solomon built, pottery that had the names of prophets on it, inscriptions that mention Israel and the House of David, and all kinds of cool things.  I saw the actual four-horned altar from Beersheba and the Holy of Holies from the Israelite temple at Tel-Arad.  I also saw some of the Dead Sea scrolls.  That was really neat to see the writings of the prophets from ancient times in Hebrew.  But the coolest things that I saw was a small metal amulet that had been found in a tomb in the Hinnom Valley.  (The valley on the southwestern side of Jerusalem.)  It is the oldest recorded passage of the Bible known to man.  The name of the amulet is Ketef-Hinnom, named for where the amulet was found--the shoulder of the Hinnom Valley.  The passage found on the amulet comes from Numbers 6.  It says, "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee...And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them."  (Numbers 6:24-27).  They think that whoever was wearing this amulet wore it for protection.  It kind of reminds me of wearing garments.  And the coolest part of the whole thing is that the amulet dates to 600 BC, the time of Lehi and Nephi.  And that's cool because it is other proof that people were writing scriptures on metal at the time.  Pretty cool huh?  I sure thought so.  :-)

The other fun thing that we did this week was have another humanitarian activity on Friday where we made school kits for kids around here.  It was a really fun activity, and we made over 2000 kits in two hours.  It was really fun, and it is a great way to missionary work around here.  And this time I took pictures.  

Tomorrow, I'm going to Tel Aviv to go to the beach with a group of about ten people.  I think it will be a much needed break and a good way to relax after a hard finals week.  And then on Monday we leave for Jordan, and we will be there for four days.  I'm really excited.  :-)  It's going to be a great week.  I'll post pictures of the trip next week.  

A life-size model of the city of Jerusalem at the Israel Museum.  The model said that every 2 centimeters equaled about a meter in real life.  The piece right behind Kjersten is Herod's temple that was built after Solomon's temple was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians.

Me in front of the building where the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept.  The building looks that way because that is what the lids of the jars looked like that they found the scrolls in.  The most impressive scroll was the Isaiah scroll.  I can't remember which chapter it correlates to in the Bible, but it was definitely in the best condition of all of the scrolls.  It reminded me of Nephi's words, "great are the words of Isaiah..." Coincidence that it was so well-preserved?  I think not.  

 Us at our humanitarian activity on Friday making school kits for children in and around the area.

 The lighting is kind of bad in this picture, but this is the table I was at.

 We worked in the garage of the Jerusalem Center because it's the only place that's big enough to have that big of an assembly line, and it was really hot in there.