Day 10 - Temple Mount, Wailing Wall, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Abraham's Camels & Bethlehem!

Day 10 was simply packed with cool experiences! From what we can remember, we started off the day visiting the Temple Mount. Currently occupied territory by the Muslims, we were not "allowed" to take bibles in to the premises. It is secured by Israeli police, and we went through security to get in. We count ourselves very fortunate to have been able to get up there, as in years past, the groups have been too large to do so.

Of course, the Jewish temple is no longer there... well, neither of the first two, actually... and rumor has it that the Muslims have been trying to destroy everything underneath the temple, to further their "evidence" that this was never the site of the Jewish temple... interesting... So PT and Ronnie pointed out where the Holy of Holies was supposed to be lined up with in the landscape, and we found this little dome with some very, very old flooring. The Muslims pretend like the location is "nothing special", but for some reason have this dome to mark it? Notice all the different types and sizes of stone at the site - atop the pillars and on the ground. The entire site has been re-built from stones from the many times the temple had been destroyed and re-built. As we stood outside the little octagon, Ronnie said something to the effect of, "I've never seen anybody actually step inside of it..." About two seconds later, most of us were standing in it - knowing fully that the Lord dwells inside of us!

Here is a shot of Donna posing at what is thought to be some of the original stone flooring from the Jewish Temple period.

As we left the Temple Mount area, we came back around to the Wailing Wall. This is the only site that the Muslims gave the Jews to have access to. Many Jews come here, as it is the closest to the Temple that they can get. They come here mostly to pray. Some of the orthodox bind a little box to their head with a leather strap that runs down around their arm. They do this because of the scripture Deut. 11:18 that says to "lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes." Its a bit funny to me, as it seems more like God is saying to have His scripture at hand, and to be continually meditating on it...

See some of the pieces of paper, which are prayers crammed into the cracks of the wall. Also the phylacteries atop some of their heads... Dictionary.com says this about it: "either of two small, black, leather cubes containing a piece of parchment inscribed with verses 4–9 of Deut. 6, 13–21 of Deut. 11, and 1–16 of Ex. 13: one is attached with straps to the left arm and the other to the forehead during weekday morning prayers by Orthodox and Conservative Jewish men."

After we left the Wailing Wall, we headed down to Hezekiah's Tunnel. This tunnel was originally made a long, long time ago to get fresh water into the city gates while they were under seige. Dug from two directions, they met in the middle after a long, narrow, winding and wet passage. PT shows us how high the water can get in the tunnel when it is deep - although I think it only got up to my knees... We walked hand in hand in the dark, communicating where there was a step down, or when the ceiling was getting lower. Many of us bumped our heads a bit, as the height probably got down to around 5' at some points. During our trek through the tunnel, Tonye had us memorize something - I think it is from Psalm 73:23-24, which says, "I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. " The pool ends up at the Pool of Siloam (means "sent"), where Jesus had put mud on a blind man's eyes and sent him here to wash - upon where he received sight for the first tim in his life! Such a cool thing for us to come out of the dark tunnel and see this place immediately upon exiting!

After drying off, we went to a place where a man dressed, and acted like he was Abraham, from the Old Testament. We all put on the garb to have a tasty traditional Jewish meal, learn more about what the culture was like, and ride camels! Here, Donna sports her new blue digs.

Abraham telling us stories...

Notice the drowsy look on Tonye's face as he is touching Corey's head? I think he was stuffed full of meat and hummus and was made to be sleepy ;)

Christina and Donna share a camel.

Tonye and Ben share a bigger camel!

As we prepared to leave Abraham, we spotted a handful of deer on the crest of a ridge! (Donna loves deer) Someone snapped this cool photo of us hand-in-hand looking at them wistfully (if only Donna could go pet them without getting hoofed!).

After lunch, we hopped back onto the bus and drove to the border between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Bethlehem is in the West Bank territory, and the wall was put up to minimize terrorism from the city to Jerusalem.

Upon crossing the border, we were met with swarms of taxi cabs! We couldn't all fit in one cab, but we took a limousine taxi to our destination, which was for us to play music in worship, and to encourage a small Christian church. Donna prepares Corey's guitar ;) Here is a group shot from some of the people with us - most of the group had already gone home before we had dinner - delicious shwarmas! See the troublemakers in the back row!?

If you're interested, you can hear some of the music that one of the guys decided to play for us, and some of the antics that followed... lots of laughing ;)

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Notice the older man going over to "monitor" Corey after the "antics" in the second video... After a long day, we needed some rest!