(Israel/Palestine) Sunday, January 12

Freda: The weather was so much better today. The high was about 45 degrees, but sunny. We still had to bundle up (this meant 4 layers) but no umbrellas or hoods. What a difference the sun makes!

There is just so much we don’t want to forget: the sights, the fabulous explanations we are hearing, and our feelings and thoughts about what we are seeing and hearing. I just feel bombarded with emotions.

Let me back up a little bit. I feel so lucky to be on this trip. Due to the ISIS activities last fall, neither the SMU alumni trip, which was to be led by Dr. Jaime Clark-Soles (a New Testament professor at Perkins) or the student immersion trip, which was to be led by Dr. Robert Hunt (a World Religions professor at Perkins and head of the Global Theology Program) filled up their allotment. So the two professors decided to merge their trips and make them one trip and because it still wasn’t a full group, the students and alumni could bring along another person. So I am Katie’s “other person.” It is a relatively small group as far as tour groups go: there are 2 professors and the Perkins School of Theology Director and Alumni Relations, 5 students, 7 alumni and 3 others such as myself. What a privilege it has been for me to be here. I have loved being on a pilgrimage with such a bright, interesting group of scholarly people. Everything we’ve done (down to drinking wine in the bar every night and shopping in the market) has had a scriptural background! Even the lack of our creature comforts at times has been overshadowed by the unbelievable experience this has been so far.

Also another observation for us has been that yes, it has been very cold and rainy and miserable at times, but we haven’t had a tenth of the crowds that are here in the other seasons, so we’ve had easy access to everything. Other that at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, we’ve not had to stand in a line at all! And how many people can say they saw Bethlehem covered in snow!!!

Katie: We started the day worshipping at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, just up the road from our hotel in Bethlehem. The church was established in the mid 19^th century (1854) by German missionaries and is the oldest Lutheran church in Israel. Normally, all of the services are in Arabic, but it just so happened that the bishop of the North Carolina Synod was visiting the church and so the sermon was in English. We did, however, sing and pray in our native tongues. It was such a warm experience to hear Korean (my friend Sungmoon was standing right behind me) and Arabic (from all of the locals) while praying in English – in a way, a little like Pentecost. Christians only make up 1.2% of the population in Palestine, so it was also moving to be in such a vibrant church in this part of the world.

The scripture for the service was Matthew 3:13-17. The bishop told a story of a man who was totally despondent (out of work, out of hope) that took a walk along the coast of the San Francisco Bay and found a bottle that had been sealed with a message inside. When he opened it, he found a will, that had been written by a woman twelve years earlier and thrown into the Thames River in London, which left half of her estate to the person that found the bottle. The moral of this story isn’t what he received, but that something in the water changed that man’s life… just like something in the (baptismal) water changes our entire lives. This was especially meaningful since we had just renewed our baptismal vows at the Jordan River a few days before. Baptism is also what joins us to the worldwide community of believers, the reminder of which was reinforced by being in a multicultural setting.

From church, we went into Jerusalem to the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall). When the temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans (fulfilling Jesus’ proclamation that the temple would be destroyed and no stones would be left on top of one another – Matthew 24:2), the Western Wall was the only portion that survived. It is a holy site for Jews to pray and is also visited by many Christians. Assuming that the Holy of Holies is still buried under the rubble of the Temple Mount, this is the closest that Jews can get to the Ark of the Covenant.

The wall is divided into a men’s area and a women’s area. It is traditional to write a prayer on a piece paper, roll it up tightly, and stick it in the cracks of the wall. Most people walk backwards away from the wall, so as not to turn their backs on the wall. Many of the women surrounding me were reading Psalms and from Jewish prayer books.

We were unable to go up to the Temple Mount as it is only open to non-Muslims for a very short window each morning. Muslims have controlled it for about 1,400 years – over the spot where the temple was is now the Dome of the Rock (the gold dome you see in many pictures of the Old City). While non-Muslims can enter the Temple Mount area (essentially a large courtyard), only Muslims are allowed in the Dome of the Rock. A sign from the main Rabbi of Israel at the entrance said that Jews were forbidden by Torah Law from entering the Temple Mount. No holy symbols of non-Muslim religions are allowed and Bibles will be confiscated if they are found. {Freda: I was disappointed that Katie couldn’t have the experience of going to the Temple Mount today. Free access to it was stopped in 2000 and is now much more controlled than when we were here in 1998. We were told that the wait in the security line can be 2 hours or so when it is open to visit.}

Anyway, we couldn’t see that so we moved on to free time in the Old City. We had the afternoon to explore, which was really enjoyable. We’ve been sort of on a rigid schedule this whole trip so it was nice to have a little free time. Mom and I took off with Sungmoon and another friend, Nancy, to walk through the bazaars in the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Quarters. It reminded us a lot of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. The shopkeepers were selling everything from trinkets made in China to beautiful, hand carved olivewood nativities, to delicately embroidered pillowcases, to freshly pressed pomegranate juice and spices, to hardware and tools. It was varied and unexpected and interesting! One of our assignments was to pick up a gift for less than 10 Shekels so that we could have a gift exchange later in the trip. The exchange rate is currently 1:4 so 10 Shekels = $2.50. It was surprisingly hard to find something neat (read: locally made) for that price, even with all of my bargaining skills!

We had dinner back at the hotel and then had a small roundtable discussion with the Methodist Liaison to Israel & Palestine as well as a Methodist Mission Intern that is working with refugees here. We always talk about the UMC being a global church, so it was neat to hear about the work that the church, and these missionaries in particular, are doing over here.

{Freda: The Dallas Cowboys – Green Bay Packers game is actually on in the bar tonight, and there is a huge crowd down watching it, not only the Perkins group. One thing I can say is that much of the crowd watching it have no clue about the rules of football, but in every society “sports are sports”!}