Schevet Achim

The last two days were pretty laid back. We went to church Saturday and Sunday. Today, we went to Schevet Achim, a ministry that transports heart surgery children to the hospital in Tel-Aviv from Gaza. We came early in the morning, and had a worship time and bible study. We then ate lunch in the car on the hour long trip to Tel-Aviv. We spent the rest of the day visiting children pre-sergury. Here's a fun picture of a little girl named Maria. She was adorable.

She had a plum in each hand and the plums made her extremely happy. It was really funny.

After visiting with the kids for a while, we were going to go back to Jerusalem but decided to get some ice-cream, which led to us visiting another wing of the hospital. Now we're going to have dinner. 

Two days in two units of measuring words.

Well, we got a lot done in the last two days. Here's our path from yesterday. We walked all around the old city, and also went to the wailing Wall! (Not much wailing...)
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=201762423793553499387.0004e2fc06f35025fb453

We parked in a very awesome parking lot, run by a crazy man. I don't mean crazy crazy, but mad skills crazy. I couldn't get a good picture but here's a really dark shot.

This dude had the entire lot fill of cars. He had to keep all of the keys straight. I didn't see an organizer. He also quadrupole parks the cars. It took about five minutes to get out car at the end of the day, and the dude knew dad by sight. 

So anyways, we parked and stayed walking through a market, which was pretty crazy. Because of Ramadan, people are celebrating like crazy, so the market place was full. We then just kept walking through the city and saw some pretty cool items for sale. We stopped to look in at:

Talk about advertisement! From then on we continued to the city wall, which we walked along fora little bit, but by then it was getting pretty dark, so we headed to the walking wall. There were thousand of ultra Orthodox Jews there, paying and bobbing up and down. I think their bobbing is part of a really funny looking ritual. Not to be disrespectful or anything of course. :-D We proceeded to go back to the car, because by that time the sun had fallen, but first, a picture from the Jerusalem wall.

We headed back through a more desolate part of the market, where we stopped for some shawarma. 

Oh yes, I almost forgot. We went to the church of the holy sepulcher, where they supposedly have Jesus' tomb. Here's a picture of it.

How did it get so big and decorated? The whole church which hold some other "holy relics" is a touristy spot for making money off of all the Catholics that go through. There is no evidence that that was where Jesus was laid. Back to going back. We got in the car and headed to the mount of olives. It was a crazy experience getting in and our of the city, because because of Ramadan, ask of the Muslims are parked on the street and curb so they can sleep next to their second most holy sight. We had lots of trouble getting up a road which was supposed to be two way, but there were so many cars parked it was barely one way. The view from the mount was amazing, though. 

And then we went home. 

Today, wet went to the Canaanite caves. For some reason I can't explain, I feel I left my tablet in the cat and got no pictures. Yup. :-\ 

The first two pictures didn't upload right. Here they are.

The Herodion.

Today we went to the Herodion the place where Herod the Great was buried.
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=201762423793553499387.0004e2d133647a2a4eb7a

They have a little shop near the parking lot, where they sell grossly overpriced souvenirs. They did have nice air-conditioning, though. We walked through the shop and took the right path leading up the hill, at the top of the hill, there it was!

But first, have you guys been to Stars and Bucks? That's right!

Anyway, the Herodion. This is actually only the place on top of the hill, there was

a lot of stuff in the valley below. 

Those are real ruins! Yay!

This pillar is older than your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and then some. It's probable this pillar is even older than your family line. In other words, that pillar is OLD. And guess what? It still holds my weight! ;)

After meandering around the place for a while longer, we mosied on down to the tunnels, which were pretty cool. On our way there, wee had a great view of the ruins in the valley. The tunnels were pretty small, but they connected the top of the hill to the side. Sneaky...

Dun dun dun! Scary entrance that you can see goes three feet...

After the tunnels, we went to see Herod's grave, which was very lame. 

After we were done with the Herodion, we tried to find some fresh cheese, but we ended up driving around a very poor community, where we met some really friendly kids, who lived with a hundred and two sheep in their back yard. Then we drive home. :-) 

Real Meal...

Yesterday, we didn't really do much until aboutb four thirty. We were looking for a good place to eat, and we were recommended to a place right next to a tourist spot. We ate our first and probably last fancy native meal, which was expensive big really good. I only got pictures of the appetizing dips and pitas. Now I can't find them... Well, here's a picture of an advertisement for the place. :-D

After our meal, we went into their little touristy center to take a look. They have very strong feelings against the Israel wall, add shown in this depiction of the the wise men being kept from Jesus...

We made or way next door to the Church of the Nativity, and the little grotto onsite. There was this one rose that looked really bright, even though they all grow in clay.

After the church, we spent the last few minutes of our time in some of the shops in the market. They had so much stuff, we came back today!

For some reason, my pictures are all out of order. :-\ 

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=201762423793553499387.0004e2bfdd06647974412

Here is the path for today. We basically spent all day in the market, with a long slot of it being spent in a scarf store, where I waited around... So yup. There are a lot of details, but I'm too lazy.

Went to church on a Saturday!

Well, not much to say here.  The sermon was very basic. After the service, we went to their reception sort of thing, where they had pita bread, hummus and Nutella.  They also had some wafers and cookies of sorts. I'm getting a little sick, so at first I didn't do much. After most everybody left, I started playing fusball and ping-pong.  I'm actually better the I thought I was. ;-) after me doing nothing for several hours, we finally we got to Sachar park, where we'd played... Soccer!  Imagine that. I made a meme, showing the different states that the rooms are in.

What we thought we would get:

What we really got:

:-D 

Posting in the middle of the day!

So I am blogging now at about two o'clock, so I can remember more of what happened. This morning we went back to the shawarma place for a devotion. The owner is actually a Christian, who lived in San Fransisco for ten years! Anyway, we all ate some more shawarma (delicious!) And then looked at Colossians 1:1-2. The devotion was for the local basketball players, so it wasn't very in depth.

Shawarma place!

Lots of landmarks...

Today we went to The Garden Tomb, one of the possible sights of Jesus tomb. There is a skull naturally carved into the rock right next to the garden, which was really cool. As I write, there are fireworks and celebrations going on, because everybody is celebrating their school. If you thought your highschool was hard, over here they have to test on all four years of highschool. Over thirty two hours of testing. If you get sixty or below, you basically have a horrible life. The only job you can get is as a teacher so all the teachers are basically mad and depressed people. The highest score was 98.9 percent. Hour do I know? They publish all the scores in the newspaper, radio, and television. We saw a fight between students in the street, today, too. (I assume they were students) Anyways, after the tomb, we walked along the street, through a bazaar sort of thing. They had all sorts of things, and we got some leechie fruit s, which were delicious. We then found a shop to get some bread and cheese, (we aren't committed to eating the meat, yet...) After that, we stopped at the Jerusalem prayer center, which was a really cool experience. They had all sorts of things to help with prayer. We drove home after that. I actually didn't take my tablet with me, so I don't have a path or any pictures. One of the cool things about this part of Israel is that it is so hilly, which makes for some fun driving, even in a minivan. :-D There's actually a road that is curvy and hilly, marked with black and white striped curb. It looks like it's a race track. Or give day club went great, with another kid coming today. Here's a picture.

After club, we heard a amazing testimony, from a man who was (and is) hunted by Hamas. He said he got his friends to get their guns and escort him to where he needed to go, because there were people right outside waiting to kill him. Not long after that, we hunted it the best shawarma place, and had some. Delicious! We also found a awesome grocery market that had all sorts of american stuff. Now it'll be impossible to go to sleep with all this partying going around. Usually the packs of wild dogs aren't too much...