The region is having a record setting heat wave right now, and coincidentally, we went to the hottest part of Israel today as well. I drank over 4 liters of water and never went to the bathroom once! = HOT! Nonetheless, it was really fun. We visited Masada, which is on top of the cliffs and one of the more impressive places to visit in the country. It was the last Jewish holdout before they were conquered by the Romans. The inhabitants (around 7000 people) all committed suicide the night before the Romans entered the city. Crazy! Then we went to the Dead Sea. Even the water was hot—about shower temperature. But it was worth it! I could tread and be straight up in the water…my upper chest, shoulders, and head would all be out of the water as if I were standing on rocks. When I laid down, all my body was on top of the water. The Dead Sea is also famous for its mud, I took full advantage of it as you can tell. Later we went to Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. It was a full fun day!
Petra was amazing, although instead of finding the Holy Grail inside the treasury, it was only an empty room that smelled like a urinal. It is considered one of the seven new wonders of the world. I hiked two of the small mountains to get a birds eye view of everything and that was pretty cool. On one of the mountains there is an alter where humans were sacrificed by throwing them over the cliff. For the first hour BYU students were the only ones in the whole park so we have some cools pictures without anyone in them...the trick is going early...we were all there waiting at the gate at 6:00 am. The buildings 
are carved with tons of detail and it is impressive to see. Well worth it!
For the past three and half days we've been in Jordan seeing what it has to offer. It was pretty dang cool to say the least! Jordan is cool because it's clean, modern and the people are nice. The weather was perfect, around 85 degrees and windy. There were lots of people from all over the middle east, including lots of wealthy Iraqi's that fled here during the war. King Hussein, who was king when David was here, still has his pictures EVERYWHERE. But there are even more pictures of his even more popular son King Abdullah, who still looks like David, as you can tell from 
the picture here.
In honor of Spain's World Cup victory, my roomate Michael and I accidently stumbled on a park dedicated to King Juan Carlos II. He served his mission in Madrid and even served six months in Alcobendas, so he knows all the people I know from there. It's awesome talking about Fuente del Fresno, Madrid, and Spain in general with him.
Today we went on a tour of the Old City here in Jerusalem. Among the many things we saw was this cool Syrian Orthodox church. We were the only ones there and the lady in black, who was in charge of the church, gave us a personal history of the place. She is from Iraq and speaks Aramic. Anyhow, it was cool meeting her and hearing her stories for a while (her voice sounds like Madame Zeroni from the movie "Holes"). Oh, and this is also one of the competing sites for the last supper.
The northern most city in Israel is Dan--once upon a time it was a city at least, now its just ruins and a park. Lebanon is a just down the hill to the west and Syria is just up the hill to the east. The tribe of Dan sure lucked out by getting this land because its by far the greenest and most full of springs.
in northern Israel and we drove through parts of it. At points we were driving right along the Syrian border, at other points there is a large "disengagement" zone between the two with UN people in the middle. It has some similarities to the DMZ in Korea although not as drastic. The picture of me smiling shows the disengagement zone. The white buildings belong to the UN and everything past that is part of Syria. There is even a large Syrian flag on the other side, kind of like the Koreans have. A ton of the land has mines. So there are signs everywhere telling you to not cross the fence, so 
naturally I crossed. There is also an old Syrian bunker you can crawl into. It's probably kind of like the squaw peak of the area for the high school couples.
This became one of my favorite places in Israel so far. This mount overlooks the sea of Galilee (as you can see). It was here that Christ fulfilled the Law of Moses and introduced the higher law that we still live by today. My class had a meeting in this secluded outdoor chapel that you can see in the picture. We discussed each "Be" and then the blessing that comes with it. I realized that there is a lot more I can be doing to be a better person. We also discussed the "9 Be's" that Pres. Hinckley introduced and how we can adapt those and live by those as well. The director of the Jerusalem Center, 
Kent Brown, was with us and discussed how he was here once escorting Pres. Hinckley when an LDS seminary group noticed him and came up onto the mount, to this spot, and met him. They sang "We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet." It was an amazing story to hear. Here we are 2000 years later and prophets walk where Christ once taught! Just as a few people followed Christ back then, i'm grateful that all of us are those modern day followers. To finish up, we sang "Nearer My God to Thee." If Mom, Dad, and Rob were there, they would have used quite a few tissues. :) There is a small chapel there as well, and when you walk in they have this piece of music in the entry way. It reminded me of the one at Dr. Hatches. So I put it on here because I thought it was cool.
Here is a picture of what Galilee looked like when we first were driving there and saw it from on top of this mountain/hill.
On the way to Galilee we also stopped as Caesarea where Paul preached to Herod Agrippa. There are many ruins still there in the port city, including this Roman aqueduct that pales in comparison to the one in Segovia, but is cool because it's on the beach.
I'm Back! The last ten days have been a blast! We visited almost everything there is to see in northern Israel! The feeling in Galilee is different from everywhere else--it's a lot more calm and relaxing than Jerusalem for starters. Some of my most spiritual experiences thus far were in Galilee.
inside the Synagogue. It was right next to Peter's house and served as the headquarters for Christ's ministry. In this synagogue he made his first public announcement that He was the Son of God. This is when the Pharisees flipped out and because of it Christ cursed it when He left for Jerusalem. Many other miracles were performed right here!
I took advantage of watching them every night. It's pretty impressive when you think about all that happened on that water: Miracle of the Fish, Christ walking on water, Christ calming the winds, etc. It's a place I spent a lot of time.
You may or may not remember that on my mission one of my nicknames was Elder Chalas Verde (because somehow it sounds like Shallenberger) which means Green Crocs. I took the picture on the left 16 months ago. Imagine my elation to run across this over sized beauty at a mall in West Jerusalem last Thursday.
The first picture here was taken across the street from the Jerusalem Center, looking East. It is the Judean Wilderness where Christ fasted for 40 days, John the Baptist roamed and ate locusts, and David lived as a young boy. Off in the distance you can see the Dead Sea and Jordan. This week we went on a small tour of the separation wall which divides the West Bank from the rest of Israel. To the left of the first picture you can see a big wall the winds up the hill...thats the wall. At other points the wall goes right through the city like in the other two pictures. Before 2003, kids would go to school on one side of the street 
and live on the other. In 2003 they put a wall down the street and now they can't get across. Crossing the border is incredibly difficult for Palestinians and Israeli's alike. Sometimes it takes up to two weeks to get permission. As an American it was easy to cross, but it's still kind of lame. Nobody here likes it. Even Israeli's are getting annoyed by it. There is overwhelming support for a two state solution....and most people believe it will be in the works within the next 15 months. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Last week one of the faculty invited a man she had bumped into to speak to us at the Jerusalem Center. His name was Elias and was in over 9 concentration camps during the holocaust, including Auschwitz and Dacau (where we visited as a family ten years ago.) He was from Poland orginally and worked in concentration camps when he 19-21 years old, so he has a clear memory of everything that happened. Some of his stories were amazing. He even says that looking back he doesn't understand how he survived. He was forced to build the railroads that carried many of the Jews to concentration camps. Amazingly, he is one of the happiest people you'll ever 
meet, as you can tell from the picture. Notice the tattooed number on his arm still.
"Hall of Names" as pictured on the left. Elder and Sister Beckstead accompanied us on the trip. Sister Beckstead was my kindergarten teacher. Who would have known that 18 years later we would be in Jerusalem together!
This is a picture of where we eat lunch out on the balcony overlooking the city. We took this picture on my birthday after my roomates got some ice cream to eat. Fun times!
The church of the nativity is built over where Christ was probably born and is the oldest standing christian church in existence. Unlike I had previously thought, the nativity doesn't necesarily mean a barn, rather a cave where animals were kept. This picture is of all the students in the cave where we got to sing a few songs, inlcluding my two favorite Christmas songs, "O Holy Night" and "Silent Night." It was a spiritual experience to imagine that we were right where Christ was born.
This past week we went to Southern Israel to the city of Eilat to go snorkeling in the Red Sea. It is world famous for it's coral reefs. I saw some pretty cool fish including a three foot long octopus. This was my first real time swimming in the ocean since I went to Hawaii in 8th grade. My roomates and I also got a little red as you can tell. The person that put the sunscreen on my back forgot a one inch section above my pants, luckily it doesn't hurt that bad. On the return trip (its four hours each way) the bus stopped so we could get gelato. I got pistachio and it was the best ice cream i've ever had! Fun Trip!
Dad, this post is mostly for you to give you some toy ideas for the yard. Tel Aviv has a bunch of adult playgrounds along the coastline that are really fun to play on. I have a lot of pictures of different things but have posted my two favorite. The first is this big spinning rope swing and the other is of a cool workout like running toy. Fun ideas!
This week we had "Arab night" which included an arab dinner with REALLY good food, the call to prayer, and Palestinian dancing....and of course some of us dressed up. In my other post I mentioned the aggressive vendors in Egypt. Well, notice that my man dress is the only one with Egyptian Hieroglyphs on it...that's because there's a small story behind it. I didn't want it...so I offered a ridiculously low price to the vendor. He started at 60 dollars, so I offered him 5 so that he would tell me to get lost. But after a minute or two of struggling he accepted my offer and I was like 'doh.' So I had to buy it. But it has turned out to be the most popular piece of attire in the Center. The other picture shows where we went to learn about the 7 species of plants mentioned in the scriptures. I also had the chance to herd sheep.
