Palm Sunday

Good morning and welcome to Holy Week!!!

Last Sunday was Palm Sunday, which ushers in Holy week for the Christians and is Passover Week for those of the Jewish faith!

Because of my broken leg, I was not able to do the Palm Sunday walk, but I was able to perch on the sidelines and watch the procession go by, which was really neat!!!

The walk begins at the church of Bethpage on the Mount of Olives where there is a church service, and ends at Stephen's Gate in the Old City. If you are interested in reading the biblical description of the triumphal entry, it can be found in Matthew 21 or also in Luke 19. Basically, Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus entering Jerusalem one week before his crucifixion. He entered on a donkey and immediately went to cleanse the temple. Holy week starts with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter, and is a time to reflect on the events of the last week of the Savior's mortal ministry. 

Apparently, if you have a broken leg, people hand you free stuff... These boys were selling palm leaves to people, but one of them came over to me and handed me this giant one and said "no charge" so I held that for the duration of the walk, which was pretty cool :-) Also, all these monks and nuns handed me flowers and song books and everyone said "God bless you" or "May God heal you" as they passed me...

Hunter, Van Swag, Chloe, Me, and Camilla

All the JC kids that were walking by stopped to take pictures with me ;-)

The Judd Family also stopped by to say hello and take a picture with me--I love them! They are the sweetest people! Brother Judd was my Old Testament teacher. 

Sarah and Hunter were awesome and took a taxi with me both ways and stayed with me during the procession. They are really terrific :-)

How cool is that?! It was neat to see thousands of Christians together celebrating the Savior

Tyler and Jaque with their palm leaves

It was pretty crowded :-)

love it.

My giant palm leaf--I ended up breaking off a few of the leaves to keep after the whole thing was over.

Like I said, Van Swag and Hunter were great and stayed with me the whole time :-) I really appreciated that!

When we were waiting for the taxi to come pick us up afterwards, this Arab man came over to me (we were waiting outside of his little grocery store) and handed me this bottle of juice. I said no at first, thinking he was trying to sell it to me, but he pushed it into my hands and smiled as he turned to walk away. I said thank you. It is a blessing to see how charitable complete strangers (and those that I know well) have been to me with this whole leg injury. 

Palm Sunday was definitely a highlight of the trip for me! I loved being there for it!

-E