School and Travels

Yes – finally a new update!! This blog site isn’t allowing me to upload photos, so I’ve been working on uploading them to my photobucket.com site… so now you can go there anytime you want and look at my “Israel” photos – which are mostly home and Jerusalem photos, and the “Israel Travels” album – which has photos of trips the school has taken…

The link is:
http://s231.photobucket.com/albums/ee15/boldt25/

As for travels… wow! Lots to say!

First of all – a week and a half ago the school took a trip up to the Galilee area. It was a three day trip, and we visited several amazing historical/biblical sites!

The first day (Friday) we started by going up to Mount Carmel and looked over the Plain of Megiddo (where the battle of Armageddon will take place). From there we went down to stay the night in Tiberias.
The second day we stopped first at Nimrod’s Fortress – amazing ancient fortress ruins (lots of pictures of this place), followed by a trip to the temple to Pan (Greek goad god) at Caesarea Philippi in the area of Tel Dan. That day ended with us joining a messianic church service in Tiberias (the pastor is who we were staying with for the weekend), and outreach/worship downtown.

The last day started with an hour of sailing on the Sea of Galilee – VERY fun! The crew brought a bunch of drums and started a drum circle with us out on the water. After sailing we drove up to the top of the Mount of Beattitudes – this was a very interesting place because it is owned by the Roman Catholic Church, and the site is covered by a beautiful church and convent. Next stop that day was the high places at Bethsaida (I don’t remember to what god the high places/alter was built). The last stop that day was the Jordan River, where several people were baptized and we all went for a swim. It was funny because the water was generally only up to our knees… but it was very welcome on such a hot day. And that night we drove back to Jerusalem…

It was a really fun trip! We drove around in rented cars – which we packed to the max. It turned into a great bonding experience for us all too… it was SO HOT up there all weekend we were all sweaty and stinky and packed together into these cars – there was nothing to do but be friendly! I don’t know how, but being just as hot, sweaty and uncomfortable as those around you is great for bonding… haha! J

More recently, the Monday of this week we all went to the Shrine of the Book Museum where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are kept. For those of you who aren’t completely familiar with why these are special – most of these scrolls are the oldest known copies of historical/biblical texts ever found. One of the most famous is the “Great Isaiah Scroll” which is the most complete of any scroll, as well as the longest scroll (something like 730 cm or just over 24 ft long!). These scrolls were written by the Essenes in Quamran. It’s a really long story to explain who these people were and what they did – so if you want to know more about them I recommend you Google it… it’s a pretty interesting history lesson…

A random funny thing – I’ve learned to eat pomegranates without making a huge mess!

I’m starting to miss a few things from home… it’s not homesickness - it's more like things that are very middle-eastern instead of American that I would change -
For example coffee. I enjoy a good cup of coffee, but it is SO expensive to buy a cup of coffee here! There is no such thing as “house coffee” – the closest is an americano – but the cheapest you can find it is about 12 shekels, equal to about $3.50 (for an americano!). More exciting drinks get into the $5-6 range… so I don’t drink coffee very often (not a huge inconvenience). You might suggest buying coffee grounds, but that is also pretty expensive…

Thank you all so much again for the love and prayers you continue to tell me about! It means a lot to know people are thinking of me back home! J
If any of you want specific prayer requests shoot me an e-mail (h_boldt@hotmail.com) and I’d be happy to give more detail…

Much love to you all!