On the Road Again

Hey Friends and family,
we have been finishing up our classes and beginning to pack our bags! I can't believe our time here is coming to an end but have cherished each moment of the journey thus far. We are headed to Egypt tomorrow for an eight day trip and covet your prayers for health and safety. It is not unlikely that many of us will return with a stomach bug of some kind so your prayers that we make it through the trip without too much stomach hassle would be great! I am sure we are in for a great trip and the oppurtunity to see the country of Egypt is exciting! I'll have many pictures to share when I return. Hope you all are well and I am looking forward to returning to the states on the 9th! I'm almost home!!!!
blessings and off to Egypt we go!

Holiday Highlights

Thanksgiving wasn't quite the same away from home, but we sure did have a wonderful night full of gratitude and celebration. The feast was delicious and we appreciated the gift of this great meal in new ways being so far away. We delighted in the pumpkin pie and variety of dessert. We all had our fill and, for us, we were with the family we have developed over the past few months. It was a occasion to celebrate and we did with great joy!

Table Centerpiece

Jenna, Adria, me, and Natalie!

Natalie, Micah, Jenna

Cindy and Me

Thanksgiving in Israel

Today, I am thankful for

The rainbow I saw from our roof after a big rain yesterday
it was complete from one end to the next hanging over Jerusalem

An extremely hot shower this morning...it's been awhile (since it was hot, that is)

Great friends to celebrate Thanksgiving with in Israel

Music

Reading great books

Fireplaces (while reading all those great books)

Amazing family
Redemption

so many reasons to be thankful and a day to remember them!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!

The Joys of the Traveling - We're all Sick

Upon arriving home from Jordan, we all felt a little tuckered out but ready to gear up for the last few weeks of school. However, come Tuesday we had all (or most of us) come down with what we have called the "Jordanian Epidemic". In other words, we have all been taking frequents visits to the restrooms where we let stomach relieve themselves. It is not a lovely thing having a parasidic stomach. Particularly when we cannot flush any toliet paper.....that's right....it's bad. I happen to live way up in the highest tower of the building and come morning time it is usually quite a fast run I must make down the stairs to allow the Jordanian disease to take it's course. We all seem to be doing better these days, but the disease continues to linger. We're all hoping it will be gone in time for the big Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, but we're not crossing our fingers. I must say I didn't get a terrible case of the disease, some got it much worse....they spent most of Tuesday in the bathroom.

At any rate, I hate to gross you out, but thought you would not feel as jealous of my travels here by hearing about the repercussions. Let's hope we all get better in time to go to Egypt and get sick again!!! I think we all need some of my mom's homemade chicken noodle soup!

Jordan - Day Four

Our last day of field study for the semester started with an early bus time of 6:30am with a quick stop at Starbucks. Originally we were going to stay at a different hotel but sewage had backed up....you can imagine it would not have been pleasant to stay there. So, we were booked in another hotel and the old one treated us to starbucks for the inconvience...nice! We woke up to the sun by traveling down to Wadi Arnon, a major river flowing through the region. We traveled to the plains of Moab and discussed the significance of the Ruth story and how similar the land was on this side of the Rift Valley versus where she had come from in Bethlehem. Our next stop landed us on Mt. Nebo at a church with a mosaic map of the ancient land at a Greek Orthodox church (unheard of in such a Muslim country) - it's amazing. However, it was the final stop of the day that left the biggest impression. This is what I wrote in my report for the day:

Getting a view of land from Mt. Nebo and discussing the Moses story revealed so much more depth to that narrative. For Moses to have brought the people, after forty years of wandering, to this place and not be able to enter the land must have been heart breaking. I can imagine the people, as Moses is preparing them to enter the land, grow excited to see what God had in store of them and anxious to find out how it would affect their lives. It reminds me of how I entered the semester. I walked into the land of Israel with little understanding, being minimally prepared by others who have gone before me, and had to adjust to the newness of the land. But even more so, I have been affected by my journey through these lands. Just like the Israelites were changed by the land, enjoyed the land, but also struggled through their experience of a new place, I too have gone through similar disappointments and triumphs this semester.
As we were called to consider how the Israelites did not know their future or what life would look like now that they finally reached the promise land, I am struck by how God calls us to be faithful to what he has given us so far and to trust his plan for the future. It is true that I have little knowledge about what my future will look like or what it contains, God has protected and provided this far, what makes me think he will not in the future? I am reminded of a devotional that was given in class. In discussing how this land is a land between, our lives can also be a “land between” of sorts. The land has been fought over, traveled through, influenced by other cultures and beliefs. I often find my life being pulled in different directions, my heart being cluttered by outside influences, and my soul being fought for in the spiritual realm. However, God carried his people through this shifting and changing land and He will continue to do this for me as one of his children.
Psalm 16 comes to mind when I think about this land and about my own life. Psalm 16 is a reminder how to live as we grow in relationship with God and His communion with us. It celebrates the land God has given the author and how God had continually been his “portion” and has been faithful. The author than finds himself thankful and confident in trusting God’s plan. When reading the scripture I can echo the author, “my boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places”. God has orchestrated my life in a way that should cause me to celebrate, be thankful, and trust in His continued provision. So, it is with a heart of gratitude that I leave Israel, trusting God will care for me as He has cared for the Israelites. Even in my doubt or my own Israelite type of rebellion, God will continue to call me to himself and carry me through every desert I face.Wadi Arnon

Wadi Arnon

The Plains of Moab

Church at Mt. Nebo - Medeba Map - Jerusalem in the circular portion in the middle - Jericho is off to the upper left of Jerusalem where the palm trees are

View of the land from the Mt. Nebo site

Art depicting the staff and serpent episode of Moses when he was asking for deliverance of the people from Pharoah

Jordan - Day Three

Day three in Petra started early, like most days on this trip. We has stayed overnight at the Petra Palace hotel and began early in the morning walking down the road to the site of one of the seven wonders of the world. We walked into the entrance of the park and made our way down the winding paths to what is called the treasury of Petra. Petra was a great and grand Nabatean city and was located on a major trade route in the Trans-Jordan. It was incredible to see the intricate design of buildings and statues that had been carbed out of these massive red sandstone cliffs. It must have taken years to do such amazing work and I am confident the artifacts remaining are just as appealing to the eye as they were back then. Just 10 years ago their were beduoin communities living in the caves of this ancient city until the Jordanian government moved them out to make this a preserved site. Even today there are some beduoin communities that refuse to move and are tucked away in the caves of this huge city. Here are some pictures to highlight the journey:

On the walk into the site, there are remains of a shepherd leading his donkeys still visibly carved into the rock. This is quite an extravagant decoration for any ancient city.

The treasury - It is massive...if you can see inside the door, you can see the people standing there and get an idea for the scale of the structure. It's completely empty inside and would have contained tombs.

Close up picture of the carvings on the treasury - these are just the remains so I'm sure the originals were quite intricate.

Janelle kissing the camel! The camel's little owner gave her good directions!

This captures the natural designs found in the red sandstones - amazing colors!

Another shot of sandstone - amazing that this came about naturally

Adria taking pictures from the high place - it was 600 steps up the side of a mountain - quite a hike!

After the 600 step hike up to the high place we opted on the donkey ride up the 900 steps to the Monastery due to time constraints....and if I'm honest, we were thrilled to have the donkeys once the journey scaled the steps. It was an extremely funny ride - I haven't laughed that hard in a long time and only cost us about $10 from the little bedouin men who owned the donkeys. Brian muttered under his breath about how dangerous riding a donkey next to cliffs, he had some good running commentary all the way up. Danielle thought the donkey might buck her, I assured her it wouldn't happen, and I would know because I've ridden horses so many times ;). Karin just couldn't stop laughing and I held up the back of the donkey train trying to keep my donkey from sprinting up the steps and loosing any bladder control I had left after the laughter. Oh, it was fun!

This is the monastery...it may not look that big but if you imagined me standing in the door way, I would be the side of a tiny dust mite.....this thing was huge!

At the monastery site, their was a lookout we hiked to. We could see out to the Rift Valley, Dead Sea, and on to the hills of Israel.

Jordan - Day 2

Day two began with a trip to Tyre, to the land of Tobiah. We went to a site that had a series of tombs from the family of Tobiah. The inscription was what told us who would have been buried there. People probably used this tombs to live in before building the village just down below. We also visited the palace just down the road. The day was also spent at Jerash and ended at the archeology museum and the citidel of Amman.

The Tobiah family tomb

The palace in Tyre - land of Tobiah - The word Tobiah speaks about the goodness of the land (the land of Tov - which is good in Hebrew) and is mentioned throughout scripture as a strong land and family group.

There were local beduoin kids hanging out at the palace site. They would hand us little pieces of fruit from the trees nearby and then ask us for money. We quickly learned not to take the fruit from the kids...although they were pretty cute in the process.

A local man and his grandson

The Jabbok river - the river would have seen Jacob's travels to meet up with Esau. Jacob may have been next to this river when experiencing the "wrestling" episode in Genesis.

The theater at Jerash - there were two local guys playing the bagpipes and thr drums...it was pretty funny. One of our classmates Aubrey is a trained opera singer and sang for us as well....the acoustics were amazing!

The main cardo in Jerash - the city of a thousand columns

These columns have survived earthquakes and were built to survive other natural disasters as well...they were quite amazing and it was quite a feat to build them

Part of the temple to Artemis and the nymph gods - this was clearly a Greco-Roman city

Anna and I in front of the biggest flag in the world - of course, it is a Jordan flag and is very far away in this picture!

Jordan - Day One

Well friends, our field study days have ended and we finished our series of trip with a four day journey to Jordan. It was such a fun trip to be in a more "middle eastern", arabic speaking culture. Jordan is 92% Muslim and we experienced their culture in the food that we ate and in the people we interacted with. There were many Bedouin (tent-dwelling farmers) communities we interacted with and experienced. It was interesting to see elements of a third world country clashing with the first world in Jordan. We were required to have a Jordanian tour guide and police man on the bus which also added to our experience of the middle eastern conflict and how the relationships stand because of it. The land in Jordan is almost identical to that of Israel and almost mirrors the geography on the other side of the Dead sea. We saw many thing in Jordan and I'll let the pictures tell the stories on our first day.

Jordanian farmer turning his tractor around next to our bus

A view to the Sea of Galilee from the Eastern side at Gedara

The Theater at Gedara...made of Basalt when the ones in Israel are mostly limestone

A beduoin sheep herd being held in with a tire fence. A shepherd watched from the side to protect the flock

The beduoin tents...they were located on a hillside right next to a modern apartment building

The sunset at Ramoth Gilead

There was a Starbucks in Amman...the capitol city of Jordan. It was such a fun treat to get to go to Starbucks for a little taste of home

A group of us took a couple taxi out to the store and made sure to buy our Jordan starbucks mugs!

Happy Birthday to Sarah!!

It is my sister's big birthday today! Love you and wish I could be there to celebrate!!!
Happy 26th Sarah!!