Resurfacing

I know, I haven't blogged in ages. Forgive me, please. In my defense, the last week of school was InTeNsE, to say the least. We took finals for a lot of our classes and some of them went well, others not so well. But whatcha gonna do? I'm just glad it's over and done. That's all that matters. We only have two classes now (New Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies) and it's so glorious. I'm officially done with Old Testament, Judaism, Islam, and Arabic. Being done w/ Islam and Judaism is the best feeling EvEr.

In other news, the familia is about ready to kill me due to the lack of blogging. Actually, the death threat is probably due to an even worse crime: no new pictures. My apologies. I am officially repenting and posting pictures. Don't worry that I took these about two months ago. I mean, what better place to start than the beginning?

Our first field trip when we got to the Holy Land was designed to orient the students w/ the geography of the land. First, we went to the Seven Arches Overlook which is also on the Mount of Olives and is not too far from the JC.

View of the Dome of the Rock and the Old City wall from Seven Arches.
Also, in the very bottom of the picture is a Jewish Cemetery.

Next we went to another place on the Mount of Olives, the Augusta Victoria Tower. It's owned by the Lutheran Church and also functions as a hospital. The purpose of the tower is to commemorate the Ascension of Christ.

Inside the Augusta Victoria

Outside of August Victoria, tower and all.

After this, we drove to the Elias Monastery which is in the southern Jerusalem. Standing on a hill by the monastery, we were able to look over to Bethlehem. I had no clue Jerusalem and Bethlehem were so close together; it's kind of like going from Orem to Provo, with one huge difference: a Separation Wall. Bethlehem is in the West Bank, which is the reason for the Wall. Call me a dumb American, but I had no idea Bethlehem was in the West Bank. Constantly learning new things here, and this was just the beginning.

Bethlehem, with the Separation Wall in the foreground.

From there, we drove to the Haas Promenade, which is also on the southern end of Jerusalem.

View from Haas Promenade. If you look closely, you can see
the Dome of the Rock slightly to the left of the center.

Our last stop was Nabi Samwil. This is a synagogue/mosque built to commemorate the Prophet Samuel. Some people think he was buried here, but evidence indicates otherwise. Anyway, the ground floor is a mosque and the basement is a synagogue. It was interesting to see two different religions that honored the same prophet in the same place.

Nabi Samwil Mosque/Monastery

This is the Jewish Cenotaph honoring Samuel
that was in the basement of Nabi Samwil.

After looking around, we went outside to look at more of the geography. We could see the hills of Ephraim in the distance, and closer to us we could see Gibeon. We had a short devotional there talking about some of the events that took place at Gibeon, namely the Biblical account of when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still during the Israelites' war with the Amorites. This is embarrassing to admit, but I couldn't even remember that story. I can safely say that I will never forget it now, however. :)