We woke Saturday morning to an aggressively cold breakfast served by our hotel. They took the admonition to help the "stranger that is within thy gates" (Exodus 20:10) keep the Sabbath seriously. We started our day outside the walls of Old Jerusalem for a talk about Pilate and his lack of courage.
Then we walked through the city to the Antonia Fortress, the place Roman soldiers were stationed in the city and where Pilate was staying when he came to Jerusalem.
Street level in modern times is about 20 feet higher than the street in the times of Jesus. We climbed down below the city to the ground floor of the Antonia Fortress. The upper levels no longer exist.
These are the stones from the floor in the time of Jesus. This is an authentic site where Jesus would have walked.
Soldiers played gambling games to pass the time. This sectioned area protects a stone that has a game board scratched into it.
This is a view outside the fortress.
The pool of Bethesda was nearby.
There isn't any water in the pool now. This is the location where Jesus healed the paralytic man as described in John 5.
Here Micael Wilcox taught a lesson about waiting for 38 year blessings. Our trip to Israel was a 27 year blessing.
St. Anne's church is next to the pool of Bethesda. According to legend, Anne is the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. The church was built be the Crusaders in 1140 AD on the spot where Mary was supposedly born. It has beautiful acoustics and our tour guide, George, sang Ave Maria as a demonstration.
From the Church of St. Anne, we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane.
The official Garden of Gethsemane belongs to the Catholic church and is next to the Basilica of the Agony. Loud music played from loudspeakers at the church most of the time we were at the garden which did not match our expectations for such a sacred spot.
The oldest and largest olive trees on the Mount of Olives are in this spot. Some of these tress are 900 years old.
Across the street from the garden is a private, walled garden. Our tour guides had reserved this spot for an hour.
In this quieter spot, we could contemplate the Savior's love.
The trees in this garden were younger, but the setting was more natural and we appreciated some time for reflection.
Just above the private garden is the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden. This park was dedicated by Spencer W. Kimball in 1979 to commemorate Orson Hyde dedicating the land of Israel for the return of the Jews in 1841. It's a public park that was built through donations and is maintained through a partnership between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Israeli government.
The view from the garden of the Mount of Olives and Old Jerusalem is beautiful.
This was one of our favorite stops and favorite views in Israel.
One more photo.
A word about our tour guides. We had at least 7 Egyptian tour guides in Egypt, 1 Israeli tour guide in Israel, a Palestinian tour guide for half a day and Michael Wilcox as our educator. However George and Garrett Dyer were our main tour guides. Our tour company's motto is "We don't send you, we take you," and they promise beginning to end tour services. Well, that's the promise and then there's covid. This was actually George and Garrett's first trip to Israel. They had been to Egypt only one week before the rest of us arrived. Another couple tested positive for covid and were unable to be guides so George and Garrett stepped in at the last minute. George stars in a musical show in Branson, Missouri, and often leads tours of Branson. George and Garrett weren't terrific tour guides, but they were super good natured, always willing to help and fantastic singers. George is a classically trained opera singer and had a beautiful song prepared for almost every location we visited. And with all the other guides we had on the trip, the fact that they did not know where we were going or what we would be doing was not a big deal.
From Jerusalem we drove about an hour south to the Dead Sea. Whatever we thought the Dead Sea would be like, we did not expect a resort.
The minerals in the Dead Sea are thought to be terrific for your skin so this is a popular spot to visit. The elevation here is 1410 feet below sea level.
The water felt weird and slippery on our skin, but it was fun to float with no effort at all, except the effort of sitting up so the salty water didn't get in our eyes.
Here are Gibson, Helen and Emma. We stayed at the Dead Sea for about an hour which was a good amount of time. We stopped at a snack stand for pizza and ice cream and nearly killed Helen with some undetected nuts. Fortunately Helen didn't eat enough to do real harm and someone on our tour had Benadryl in their bag. The Dead Sea is not a good place for a medical emergency.
On our drive back to Jerusalem we stopped at the traditional site of Jesus' baptism. The brown church in the photo is in the country of Jordan. The Jordan River is the border between Jordan and Israel and both countries commemorate this site on their own side of the river.
Our final stop of the day was an overlook of the Wadi Kelt, a valley that runs between Jericho and Jerusalem. Before we came to Israel, we imagined the whole country would look like these brown hills. This valley is the setting for the parable of The Good Samaritan and it was easy to imagine robbers hiding in the valley waiting for a victim. Michael Wilcox shared a prophecy from Ezekiel 47 with us, where Ezekiel sees a spring of water begin at the temple and run down through the valley until it becomes a deep river and heals the valley and the Dead Sea so that the valley is full of fruit and the sea is full of fish. Michael taught that the temple can spiritually heal and bring life to each of us.
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