We are Family...It's CRAZY!
Holy Land Tour – Final Blog
We are Family…its CRAZY!
Well folks I’m sorry for the delay in this final blog. We had some technical difficulties the last couple of days in Jerusalem and then you can imagine the “jet lag” upon returning home. We were back in our Jerusalem hotel, The Knights Palace, the last 2 nights before coming home and we had the entire group together and healthy! We had a last day of touring with Becca then a free day on Sunday before making the long flight back to the states Monday so I have lots to share! Since I normally give yall daily fitbit readings I thought it would be fitting to now give you the GRAND TOTAL for 10/8-8/22!! You are going to lose your mind when you see this…Flights of stairs -611 (that is SIX HUNDRED & ELEVEN), miles – 84.65 (so, yea, we totally walked to Austin) steps - 206,116, and calories burned (we needed it after all that pita) – 41,707. Now to be upfront, there were some that did less and even a couple of rockstars that did more. But the numbers I have provided you all week have been what I have done so you can get information from the same source. The CRAZY thing is that we all made it!!! Well, all accept my sweet blister family. They had to be deflated before I got home as they were getting to big for their britches.
Some fun facts since we last talked…
Our last night in Nof Ginosar (Sea of Gallilee) was great. Some of the ladies and I stayed up and talked about the CRAZY things we have seen and how blessed we are to have been able to do this adventure. After we finished chatting it up we said our goodnights and headed to our rooms. Now, Ruth and I had decided to be super smart and did some laundry the night before since we had 2 days to let them dry. (no dryers seen the entire trip) Well the circulation apparently wasn’t that of which is optimal for drying laundry so we started hanging them all over our room that morning before we went out for the day. We even hung some t-shirts and pants on the porch/patio thingy (we were on the 1st floor) and when we returned they were dry. The outside clearly had the right temperature to dry our clothes. Now the other items left very wet in our room were items that most would not think best to hang out for the world to see. Ruthie and I came up with a “completely brilliant plan”, or so we thought. We would hang all of the “personal items” on the porch/balcony when we went to bed since it would be dark and we would be up before anyone was really moving around and could grab them and pack them away then. So we did just that, hung the personals our to dry and went to bed in hopes of dry items in the morning. Alarm goes off, Ruth gets up and opens the patio door, then says “OH NO”. I jumped up (ok maybe not jumped as my entire body felt as if I had just wrested in the WWE Championship) and I said, “Did the cats get them?” Then she springs it on me…”no it wasn’t the cats. They have a sprinkler system and all of our clothes are now soaked.” Well this didn’t go as planned. #AdventuresWithRuth&Sarah
You remember Papa T? Ben’s daddy? Well I just love that man. And, if you know me well you know that if I love you a lot I will prank you and tease you and joke with you. Well, I did this with most of the people on this trip because I love them and we had a great time laughing together. But, Papa T was really in the prime spot. Not only do I adore him, and he’s funny, he can take a good joke, but he also say in front of me in the bus most days. One day we went through a check point and we all had to take out our passports. We then moved on to the next teaching site and as I was getting off the bus I noticed he left his passport on the seat in the bus. Now who can just walk by that? Not I said the brown cow. So I swiped the passport then informed the pastor that I was in possession of this most precious item belonging to his father. At first Ben just went to give it back to his dad to which I quickly jumped in and snatched it back. You can’t ruin this slam-dunk! It was then that Ben-Jammin realized we were in prank mode and he joined in the effort by telling his dad that he will need his passport at the next site. Papa T said Ok and then kept on doing what he was doing. I then couldn’t wait any longer. I asked if he had ever been out of the country and if so did they stamp his passport (all of which I knew the answers to since I was holding the golden ticket). He said yes and I asked to see it. He then started the pat down. You know the pat down when you are trying to find your phone or your glasses or your keys. He then started going through his bag and I could see the anxiety start to creep up so I gently slipped it between his back and the seat then said, “Maybe you’re sitting on it”. So he got up and THERE IT WAS. We all died laughing and he was relieved yet ready to wring my neck. He warned me that he’d get me back…I doubted this effort. Fast-forward to the next day or 2 and I got back on the bus after a teaching site and went to put the camera in the camera bag when “what to my wondering eyes should appear”, but a GINORMOUS bug. I’m not gunna lie people….I’m almost had to change my pants and you know my backups were soaked from the sprinkler so that wouldn’t have been good. My heart was racing, my BP was out the roof and the search for the culprit began. I blamed the Hearnes, the Bryants, then Papa T who played it like a pro. Until he let that little grin out. I took the plastic repulsive creature out of my bag and threw him out of the bus. #VarmitBeGone #PapaTgotMeGood
Now for the good stuff…
Our last day reading the land took us to Magdala, Capernaum, and Tabgha. This was an amazing day of scripture, standing on the very spot believed to be where Jesus did the Sermon on the Mount, and the home town of Mary Magdalene. These pictures aren’t going to do it justice, but know that we were blown away. We had seen lots and lots of towns and villages that have been excavated over the last couple of weeks but what we were about to see really stuck me to my core. We were standing looking at an excavation site when Becca T Great said do you see anything different about the stones in Mary Magdalene's home than the others. Yall, it was perfection. The stones work, the cement work…it stuck out. It clearly was someone that had much better skill than any of the other sites and towns/villages we had seen. Who else to be more skilled than our Jesus? We all hear about Jesus being a carpenter, but he word Tekton can also be meant as a “craftsman”. In the area there was very little wood and almost all swellings were made of stone in that time. This dwelling, Mary Magdalene’s, stood out from ALL the rest. The likelihood of us standing and touching the very work that our Jesus did is just, well, its just plain CRAZY!!
In Magdala is the sweetest chapel overlooking the Sea of Galilee. There is a boat as the alter. The foyer is a memorial to all women. There are small side chapels for healing services. This was one of those places that maintained reverence even with the flood of tourists. When we first walked in there was a group having a worship service and they started singing amazing grace. I was frozen. My skin crawling with goose bumps and tears began to stream down my cheeks. If you have ever tangibly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit then you know the feeling I’m talking about. It was undeniable. I then thought to myself, where is Mary!? I went to find her and had her come to hear for herself. She too couldn’t contain herself and walked into the chapel and began singing and worshipping with them. Several pictures included on FB.
We then made our way to Capernaum. Again, a place where we know miracles took place at the hands of our Jesus. He healed many as seen in Luke 4: 31-36 and Luke 7:1-10. And maybe most remembered the story about the paralyzed man being lowered thorough the roof to reach Jesus in Mark 2:1-12. It still is just CRAZY that we stood in these very places. We touched the stones of the walls; we walked in the dirt and dust of these very places. A song kept playing in my head…”He lives, He lives. Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me.” I truly felt him walking with us. CRAZY!
We also walked up a rocky hill to the exact place where they believe Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. We sat up under the one tree and Becca read us scripture. It was silent and peaceful. It was refreshing. It was comforting. We looked to the left and to the right; we looked at over the Sea of Galilee. We looked where He looked, we saw what He saw. I know we as Christians believe in the stories of the Bible and we know Jesus and those in the Bible were real people living real lives, but I have to tell you, being in the land, walking in the rocky conditions, and seeing the stone villages adds feelings to the words and to the people. CRAZY!
On our free day some of us went to the Western Wall and prayed for and placed prayers in the stones from many of you. Know that I prayed for each of you that sent me your prayer requests. We also did the Via Dolorosa, the Stations of the Cross. We happened to run into a group from Africa that were carrying the cross and singing their native songs. It was amazing and a gift that we got to be a part of that for a small section. Bill Schultz read us what happened at each station as we got there. This was especially moving as we hurt for Him in these spaces and felt extremely close to Him. We will never be able to read that story or hear that story without seeing those very places. CRAZY!
I know I have missed so so much because we saw and learned and felt so so much, but I hope this blog has helped some of you feel like you were along for the ride with us in some form or fashion. I hope you enjoy the pictures even if you don’t read my nonsense. I hope you feel just a little of what we felt after reading the blog or seeing the pictures. I hope the story of our journey has somehow blessed you in someway. If you have any questions or want to hear more, please reach out to any of us. We would love to share more about our experience with you. Thank you to my team mates who made this experience even more special than I could have hoped. I love yall; we are family! Thank you all for your prayers and your support over the last couple of weeks. We love our church family!
Sarah Morris
Your Tardy Blogger