Hi Everyone,
Happy belated Easter. Jerusalem was pretty lively during the ‘passion’ week. On Friday me and the two girls from Poland went to the old city where thousands and thousands of people gathered together to commemorate ‘Good Friday’. They all start in one place (which ironically is now a Muslim school) and walk through out the old city, singing and chanting the whole time. There are fourteen stations that have some special significance. The final stop is the church of the sepulchre, where orthodox Christians believe Christ was crucified, wrapped in the grave clothes, and buried. They believe all of that took place where the current church is located. The whole trip takes around two hours. While we were walking I started to get hungry so I started singing about being hungry, to the tune of whatever the crowd was singing, and the guy in front of us started laughing and turned around to ask where I was from. He said he could tell I was American from my song…because he was thinking the same thing hahaha. As it turned out he was from Alaska too, or sort of. He lived in Wasilla for 17 years. He was a pretty devout catholic and showed us all around the church and explained the significance and history of all the different rooms and what not. It was all very interesting, though I don’t know how much I believe it.
Sunday Elias’s father and I went early to the garden tomb (the tomb outside the city walls where most protestants believe that Christ was buried). They garden is run and maintained by an association from England, and they had a service at 6:30 in the morning, just as the sun begins to rise. There was about 1,500 people there. Almost all of them foreigners. The service was of course in English. It was actually pretty neat. The held services through out the day in a couple different languages. The last service was the Arabic service at 3:30, which we all went to. It also was pretty neat. There was not nearly as many people there, maybe 300 or so, but at least a hundred of them were foreigners. There were also a number of messianic Jews there. Unfortunately most of the service was translated into English. I mean it was good that it was translated so that the people could understand it…I just don’t like that everyone caters to the English language.
I would post pictures of the Tomb, but again, the internet is not cooperating with pictures...
Monday was more or less a normal day, so I stayed home and studied and practiced Arabic. That night we went to al-ram to visit relatives. It was a lot of fun. Now that I’ve been here so long I feel much more comfortable. There was a family visiting them from Germany. The father was originally from Jerusalem, but he converted to Christianity from Islam and left for Germany because it wasn’t safe any more. Now he is a missionary in Germany. He is not Baptist, but it was very interesting and helpful to speak with him.
Well, I don’t have much else to say. I come back to Alaska late Thursday/early Friday (right when brother Harbin leaves…) I am looking forward to coming back, even though it appears that it will only be for a short while. I miss every one up there. See you all soon.
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