Gerash City

Near Amman is this old roman city called Gerash. It is considered to be the best preserved Roman City outside of Italy. We spent several hours seeing the  two theatres, the chariot racing place, the streets, and the temple. To make it a little more fun, everybody switched sunglasses, hence the picture below where everyone is pointing to the person they got the glasses from. In both of the amplitheatres we saw a small show, in one a guy was playing bagpipes. In the other (only 5 of us ventured far enough to find it) there was a group of young boys doing a skit for their class. It was pretty funny to watch the same 15 second murder scene over and over.

Petra

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!

Amman, Jordan!

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.

¡Viva España!

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.

St. James Church

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.

Dan, Dan, and Syria!

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.
The second picture is in Dan and shows the mud city gate to the old city of Laish where Abraham would have passed through coming from Ur (Iraq today). It is the oldest know city gate still standing, dating back to 2000 BC, that's over 4000 years old!
As you know, the Golan Heights are 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.

Mt. of Beatitudes

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.

Nazareth, Caesarea, and Galilee

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.
The last picture here is really cool too. During Christ's time, Nazareth was really small and there was a small spring where everyone would get water. The spring is still there and has now had a church built on top of it. So it was neat standing and drinking from the same spring that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus all would have drunk from. Also, orthodox Christians often travel to drink the water here thinking it will make them fertile. (weird).

Sea of Galilee and Capernaum

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.
What makes that area unique is that we know exactly where Christ performed many of his miracles and where He walked. In this first pic, for example, the black stone i'm touching was the step entering the Synagogue of Capernaum. Christ would have used that step. The next picture is 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!
The place we stayed at (Ein Gev, David would have stayed there too I think) was right on the edge of the water. It's a lot like Bear Lake and I went swimming almost everyday. My back is darker than it has been since 6th grade! The sunsets were amazing and 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.

Chalas Verde

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.

Seperation Barrier

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.

Remembering the Holocaust

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.
His whole family was killed in the holocaust. Since he was the only survivor he had no where to go after the war. He married a girl and they went to Guatemala where they raised their family. He doesn't speak English, so it was neat being able to speak with him in Spanish as well. One of his daughters married a Chileno who was there and I talked with him for a while as well. The next day we went to the holocaust museum and that was a sobering experience. My favorite part was the "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!

Birthday

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!