Jetlogged: March 2013

Easter Sunday at the Garden Tomb

Happy Easter!!!

We have church on Saturdays here, and since next week is General Conference and it is the beginning of the month, we had our Easter program last week. Yesterday we had fast and testimony meeting and next week is General Conference (but we are going to be in Galilee so I think we will be watching conference delayed)...

Anyway. Today is still Easter Sunday and we went to a sunrise service at the Garden Tomb. I believe the service today was Protestant. This morning was one of my highlights of the whole trip for sure, I loved it!!!

So before I post pictures from today, I have a few from other visits to the Garden because I don't think I have blogged about the Garden Tomb yet...

I really love signs that have English, Arabic, and Hebrew :-)

The Garden Tomb is one of the traditional places of Jesus Christ's crucifixion and burial. (the other popular one is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher) The tomb is owned and operated by a British organization that is multi-denominational.

The Garden tomb was discovered in the 1880s, largely because this adjacent hill is believed to be Golgotha, the place where Christ was crucified. If you look closely, you can see that the mountain naturally has the face of a skull. You can really only see the eyes and nose, because the mouth is lower than the current ground reaches. "Golgotha" means "skull" (or place of the skull), so some scholars think that the hill of Calvary or Golgotha was literally a skull shaped hill.

This is the inside of the tomb. It matches what archeologists and historians say the tomb of Christ would have looked like. The body would have been laid to rest inside the tomb and decompose for a year or so, and then the bones would be collected and put into an ossuary (bone box) and stored in the tomb. In this way, one tomb could be the burial place of multiple family members.

And now for Easter:

We left the center at 5:30--about half of us walked and half took a van (I arranged the vans for those who wanted to join me, as I cannot walk the two large hills between us and the garden tomb). You can tell that it was still dark outside when we were in line this morning...

Sarah is so great. We kept standing up to sing during the service and she helped me up and back down every time. What a champ :-)

We JC students sat on these steps right in front of the tomb that they reserved for us--the Garden Tomb people like the Mormon University :-)

In front of the tomb--whether this actually was the tomb where Christ was laid to rest before He was resurrected or not, it was somewhere nearby here and I still enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate Easter in the general area where the Crucifixion and Resurrection occurred.

Cousins :-)

The worship band--It was great! The service was a mixture of Christian Rock songs, prayers, a sermon, and communion (we got little olive wood cups to take home as souvenirs even though we did not participate in drinking the wine ;-})

I loved the worship through music that we were able to participate in

The tomb: I loved sitting there and reflecting on Jesus Christ while looking at a tomb that could have been his, or at least, one that looks the way His would have looked. I am so grateful for my Savior, my Redeemer. I know that He lived on this earth and that He continues to live. I know that because of his infinite and continuous Atonement, we can all be forgiven fully of all of our sins and that all of our shortcomings and mistakes and pains can be made whole. We are instructed to "be ye therefore perfect" (Matthew 5) and it is only in and through the atonement of Jesus Christ that we are able to do that. I cannot adequately express my feelings towards my Savior who has paid the price so that I don't have to. I am filled with love and gratitude on this day, a day of remembrance for the glorious event of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. He overcame death, He paid the price, He is the Savior of the World. as it says on a placard on the tomb "He is not here, for He is risen." He is not in that tomb, but He is very much in our lives each and every day when we believe in Him and rely on the glorious gift of His atonement. Christ doesn't just make up the difference, he makes the difference. and I write these words in His holy name, even Jesus Christ, amen.

Happy Easter!

-E

Seperation Wall

Hello again!

On Friday morning, we were able to have a special "field trip" (it was more like an outing) with Danny Seidemann, who is originally from New York, but moved to the State of Israel in the 70s or 80s I believe and is now an attorney and is very well-versed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has briefed American Presidents and other foreign dignitaries on the conflict when they come to help with peace talks, and he was commissioned by the CIA to make maps of the current borders of Jerusalem. So he is very knowledgeable and we were lucky to hear his thoughts on the conflict. He spoke to us for about an hour at the JC and then we all got on busses and went to three different locations to keep talking about the conflict.

This is Danny teaching us

At the Jerusalem overlook--we discussed the boundaries of Jerusalem and the current political standing of this city, which is an exception to the rule when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to the Israeli government, the whole city is part of the State of Israel. According to Palestinians, West Jerusalem is part of Israel but East Jerusalem is occupied territory. Internationally, the status of Jerusalem is "to be determined"

Next, we went to a part of the Separation Wall. The wall was built beginning in 2002, and is still not completed (although in most places it is). The wall was put up as a barrier between the West Bank and the State of Israel by Israel to protect against suicide bombers and other violent acts that were becoming a serious problem. The wall is highly controversial, obviously. It does "protect" against violence, but it is by no means a cure to the conflict.

Also, the wall cuts off the West Bank from Israel pretty completely. In places like this one, the wall divides a community in half. The wall goes across a main road, cutting the town in half. The children on the West Bank side of the road would have to drive over 2 or 3 hours to get to a school on the Israel side, whereas before the wall was built it was a 5 minute walk. In many places, farmers homes are on one side of the wall and their farmland is on the other. Hospitals that were once a few minutes away are now several hours drive away. There are checkpoints, but they are scattered so that anywhere you want to go is going to be a long drive, and it is difficult to get through the checkpoints (especially if you are a Palestinian who lives in the West Bank).

This gives you an idea of how high the wall is--it has barbed wire at the top, and many places on the wall have graffiti (I have some pictures of the graffiti below on this post). The wall is pretty heavily protected.

Sidenote: When we were in Bethlehem last week, we saw some really cool graffiti. I got several postcards that showcase graffiti on the wall from the British street artist Banksy. You may have heard of him--he is one of my favorite artists, his work is really incredible. You should probably google image search him. If you are interested, this is the link to his Wikipedia page.

I pulled this image off the internet, but this is one of the pieces we saw in Bethlehem (is it sad that seeing this in person was one of my highlights of that field trip? haha, our bus drove past it and my friend Sawyer and I were so pumped!) [end sidenote]

another sidenote:

when we were coming home from our field trip to Neot Kedumim, we were driving past a part of the wall and we saw three boys climbing over the wall. We saw them on top (coming from the West Bank side), they dropped a rope through a hole in the barbed wire. Two of them dropped down with a duffel bag. Then we heard lights from the cops, so the third quickly brought the rope up and went back down the West Bank side. The two guys (teenager to early 20s) just walked down the street like nothing happened and the cops went right past them and didn't stop them. It was crazy!!! We asked our professors about it later, and apparently because it is so difficult to get work in the West Bank, people will sneak over the wall all the time (unless you have proper paperwork you can't get out of the West Bank) to get work in Israel for as long as possible. [end other sidenote]

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is so complicated on both sides. I am thankful that I have a much better understanding of it from a semester worth of classes discussing these issues. I don't know how it would be possible for someone to "choose" a side.

The final stop was a lookout near the JC. Behind Danny Seidemann and my classmates you can see the town of Maale Adumim and some empty land (Iwan). One of the biggest issues in coming up with a solution is the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Much of the West Bank is occupied by Israeli troops, and if you look at a map of the West Bank, it looks like swiss cheese. There are Israeli settlements all over--they are kindof like suburbs of the state of Israel, and the civilian occupants typically live there for economic reasons rather than ideological reasons. Arguably the most plausible way that this conflict could be resolved is with a two state solution, which would mean basically dividing the land and creating two separate countries of Israel and Palestine. One of the current problems with this is swapping land to ensure both entities get land that they are happy with, and that the land is connected enough that the two could function independently. However, the Israeli settlements in the West Bank make that difficult because they are little pockets of Israeli land in Palestine. Maale Adumim (which is in the picture) is an issue because it is one of these settlements. Netanyahu is currently in favor of developing the land between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim (its called Iwan) to make that whole area Israel. If that happens, it is likely that land swaps with Palestine to create a two-state solution would be nearly impossible. This area of land is a very sensitive issue. The Palestinians don't want to negotiate until the Israelis stop settlement development. According to Danny, the window of time for a two-state solution (which he believes to be the only peaceful solution possible) is only 1-3 years. He believes that if settlements continue to develop and peace talks are not initiated in the next few years, there will be a period of bloodshed and there won't be another opportunity for peace for 10 or so years...

I simplified that as much as possible--it is definitely more complex, and I am the first to admit that I am not an expert on this subject, but I definitely have learned way more this semester than I have ever known before.

This was a really interesting outing, probably one of my favorites this semester.

-E

Israel Museum

Hello Again!

On Tuesday a group of us to a van to the mostly-wheelchair-accessible Israel museum.

Jen and myself with the fountain/top of the shrine of the book exhibit

So these two pictures were taken at the beginning of the semester at Tel Arad, which is in the Negev desert. This is the Holy of Holies that was discovered in Arad, however, in Arad is the replica because the original was relocated to the Israel Museum!

and here is the original!

Likewise, this horned altar was at Tel Beersheva, and the original is at the Israel museum. Jen and I switched it up with these two pictures :-)

Hercules vase!

this is an actual ankle bone with a spike through it. There was a diagram showing how crucifixion was preformed. I thought this was pretty interesting...

And then we had a few minutes in the art wing of the museum--not as much time as I would have liked, I am hoping we will have a chance to go back and spend more time there.

check it. I'm in a wheelchair next to the sign of a person in a wheelchair...

I really enjoyed going to the Israel museum!

-E

Let's Go to the Zoo!!!

Salutations!

So there are not many things that I can easily access while on crutches or a wheelchair in this city (once again, I am so thankful that this injury happened when we only have a month left on the program and I have spent 3 months exploring the city). But, I did take a wonderful trip to the Zoo last Monday! It was so much fun!!! I love the Zoo!!!

It was really neat because the Jerusalem Zoo is a "Biblical Zoo" so the visitor's center is in the shape of Noah's Ark, and on many of the animals description placards there are bible versus from the Old Testament...