Happy Sabbath from the Holy Land!

After many hours and days of traveling, I made it to my new home in Jerusalem! The BYU Jerusalem Center is awesome. It’s up on Mt. Scopis and overlooks the city. Here is a view from the patio outside my room.

 My roommates are awesome, I’m way happy with them. Two of them are sisters from Colorado, and the other one is from Utah. They’re great.

 The Center seriously is amazing. It’s terraced up the hill, which looks way cool, but also is nice because we have lots of floors and lots of windows too so it’s very bright and open which I love. Every time I look out the windows I get to see a beautiful view of the city.

On Wednesday night when we first got to Israel, they brought us into the main auditorium where they have this huge organ and they gave us a mini orientation and they gave us an organ recital as well. We sang I Stand All Amazed and they opened the curtain to show the view of the city, it was unreal.

 Our first morning we got to take a little tour of the city in small groups. That was especially nice considering there are 82 of us.  One thing that I wasn’t expecting, or I guess just didn’t know about, was the trash. There is trash everywhere, and no trashcans. It is in the streets, in the plants and everything, I’m still trying to get used to it.

But the city is beautiful. The white limestone all of the buildings are made out of, the ancient architecture, and city walls, it’s pretty crazy. We walked through tons of little street market vendors around in the old city. In one of the places, my leader took us to see his friend and he showed us the deepest well in Jerusalem and he let us see some Widow’s Mites that he makes into jewelry. They’re just tiny, tiny, coins. But I still thought it was cool to see.

Friday was our first day of school! I had Old Testament in the morning and it was awesome. And our Near Eastern Studies class as well. It’s really cool because all of our professors are working together to align their curriculum together with the places we are going to see and where we are. Which I really liked, and my Education Professors at BYU would be proud of their integration too ha. That afternoon we had free time so a group of us went to the New Jerusalem area. On Friday mornings until 3pm we can’t go into Old Jerusalem because it’s a high time for prayers and certain religious things so it isn’t the safest for us so we went to the New City. We had to take a van but it was really fun exploring around over there. It was weird because it was just like any other Western European city with big wide streets that were clean, street performers, stores, restaurants, and cafes. It was so different from the Old City I forgot we were in Jerusalem.

 On our way back we went through the Old City and we spent some time exploring around the Jewish Quarter which was really cool. It’s amazing how there are so many people living in Jerusalem that are so devout in their religions and all have their Holy Places in this same city, it’s pretty crazy. While there we were able to look out and see the Western Wall, or Wailing Wall.

 That night, as a group we all went to the Western Wall. It was super cool. In the picture there is barely anyone compared to that night, the starting of the Sabbath. They divide the wall so the men worship on one side, and the women on the other. The stones at the bottom of the wall date back to the time of Herod and Christ, but the smaller stones at the top are more modern additions. Most people had their prayer books and would go put a hand on the wall and pray. Or many people were just close to the wall praying, and some would put their little prayers on a piece of paper and stick it in the wall. I put mine in. It was a way cool experience, even though I’m not even Jewish. It is one of the most sacred places for Jewish people, and it was such a cool thing for me to see how devoted these women were, and to reflect back on myself and the sacred things and places in my own life. It reminded me of the Temple open house going on right now in Fort Collins where we are able to share the most sacred place for us with others even if they aren’t of our faith.

And speaking of...

We had our first Sabbath day in Jerusalem! The local branch actually meets here at the Jerusalem Center. It’s pretty small, we definitely tripled the numbers, but it’s good. It was so cool having Sacrament Meeting in that room we had our first meeting the night we got to Jerusalem. The view over the city seriously is unreal; I probably spent most of the meeting just staring out the window at the view. What also has been super cool for me is the fact that so many hymns sing about the places we are in! Like we sang Redeemer of Israel this morning, as I am sitting here in Israel! It’s crazy. It’s hard for me to describe how it has been over here because I feel like saying how amazing or cool it is doesn’t really give it justice, because it’s so much more than just those words can convey. Basically, I still can’t believe I am actually over here in the Holy Land being able to learn here at the BYU Jerusalem Center and have this experience, and I am loving it so far.