^these are links to some videos I've taken; I can't yet upload videos to this website
I can’t believe that it’s more or less been a full week since I last wrote and thus posted. It feels both significantly longer and shorter than 7 days. The weather, first and foremost, has been amazing. It has primarily been chilly but it started to climb the thermostat today. It is insanely hard sitting here, trying to remember what we’ve done each day. You’ll get at best some brief synopsis and then an overload in one or two areas. So here goes.
Monday was our first field trip day and boy did they mean it. We went to 5 sites and were separated into two groups based on our Old Testament classes. Our first sight was Nabi Samwill. It is a very important historical place for a variety of reasons, but mostly because in both Jewish and Muslim tradition, it is the burying place of the ancient prophet Samuel. In the basement there is a synagogue and on the top there is a mosque. Some of us women went down into the synagogue. While there, we spoke with some of the women worshipping. It was humbling, awe-inspiring, and honestly really enlightening to hear what she had to share. She told us the story of Hannah and her faith and how that faith was rewarded. In this strong woman gave up her son, Samuel, to the temple and thus to God. After that she told us a little about her sister: her sister who is living in a place that is heavily bombed. She and her five children are packed and ready to come to this area, but the bombing is so bad and consistent she can’t even get out. The woman speaking to us then passionately pointed out that “You always see their [Palestinian] little ones, they’re suffering, but what about our little ones?” she soon after invited us to pray in that holy space, and pray I did.
Something very remarkable to me is how God’s children can turn any place in a sacred and holy spot through consistent and sincere worship. Nabi Samwill is one such example.
Honestly, I currently don’t remember a ton about the other sights we saw that I feel like writing about so here’s a ton of pictures. I did buy some ice cream and saw a camel and walked far too many stairs.
I think the people who organize our schedule couldn’t decide between killing us and torturing us on Tuesday because we were in class nearly all day with a ton of homework. We finally had our Israeli class, and it was good. He has a different teaching style than our Palestinian professor which I am excited about. I love learning from different people. We also got more textbooks—yay. Not. Even as an English major, over a thousand pages for one class to be read in roughly 10ish weeks is not appealing when it is primarily academic and assigned in large chunks.
Wednesday was our free day, which for me meant homework day. I went out with some other people to the Old City around 4pm, and we explored the Old City. I bought some sandals (breaking them in is rough as my feet develop new callouses) and we wandered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I’m pretty sure we ended up spending the most time in the Greek Orthodox section but I’m not positive. Dinner that night was 25 shekels a piece and delicious. Shawarma. Yum. For Israeli Independence Day, we were planning on staying out so as to attend some free concerts [hey, free music, cultural immersion, and an excuse to party, what could be better?]. However, they weren’t to start for another 2.5 hours later than that moment. So most of us decided to go home. We walked to and waited at the King David Hotel and split the cost of taking a taxi-van back. After dark we aren’t allowed to walk back to the Center.
Thursday wasn’t nearly as bad as Friday in terms of classes. What made it odd yet great was we had our first Arabic class—easily the funniest professor I have ever had in my entire college career—and it was from 5 pm to 6 pm. More homework was completed. In considering the state of my feet and my introvert-needs, I made a commitment to myself that I have to go out to the City at least once a week, but I will not force myself to go more than that.
Friday was even worse than Tuesday. We had Old Testament for 2 hours (heavenly, literally), followed by roughly an hour break, followed by 1 hour of Arabic, then lunch, then 2 hours of Palestine, and then 2 hours of ANE (Ancient Near Eastern studies). As interesting and important as all of our post-lunch topics were, it was so hard to stay awake. Post-class I forced myself to push through and was able to finish a good chunk of homework due both Friday night and these first few coming days. Then my friends and I played some games, and eventually almost the entire student body (all 84 of us, that is) wound up in the gym playing volleyball. It was good fun followed by what is called a “Dirty Thirty” aka dancing regardless of skill for 30 minutes. We did that in the laundry room (was someone trying to make a pun? I don’t know but if they were I wish it had been me).
And then here we are today. I’m currently writing this portion at 10:30 pm here in Israel while back home in Houston TX it is 2:30 pm. As a reminder, Saturdays are the day we observe as the Sabbath here in the Holy Land. It is such a beautiful place to worship. The District President and his wife spoke in sacrament meeting today. I and about half of us students received callings (I am a Come Follow Me group leader) too. Relief Society was absolutely phenomenal. I’m so tempted to just copy and paste my notes in but they wouldn’t make much sense.
Our discussion was based off of the talk “Careful vs Casual” by Sister Craven from this last General Conference. Such a good talk. A question posed fairly early on in class was “Does being familiar with something cause us to be more casual or more careful?” as considering whether or not possessing familiarity with something sacred can lead us to treating it casually and thus disrespectfully. Such an interesting way to think about the gospel and life, and especially the temple. We discussed the different ways the word ‘careful’ can be understood, and what words might replace it: intentional was the best one. We need to take the time to be intentional in our covenant making and commandment keeping. Something that I said was the casualness often times equals comfort, and how comfort tends to mean both that we are complacent and that we are not growing (there’s no growth in the comfort zone). However, there are appropriate things to be ‘casual’ with. We can also, through repetition and sincerity, make holy things become comfortable for us without losing the sacredness.
After church, we had our next ‘field trip’ of sorts which was going to the Garden Tomb. Ugh, so beautiful. Even if from an archeological standpoint we don’t know if this was that same tomb purchased for Christ by Joseph of Arimathea, the symbolism and visual physicality can still be powerful. I took some of my all-time favorite pictures there.
After that a large group of us went outside to the upper terrace and studied Come Follow Me, the one for today. We only really got through the first few sections but it was glorious studying and discussing the parables in the very land where Christ first taught them.
After that, the rest of our Sabbath was just dinner and games and movies. So overall a wonderful and amazing and tiring week.
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