Day 2

Day 1 of Touring, Tuesday May 15th This morning we had breakfast at our hotel, which the only meat was all beef hot dogs, since most other breakfast meats are from pigs (non-kosher). We are staying in Jerusalem all week using it as a jumping off point for touring Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. First we went to a few high points to get a layout of the city and got the "big picture" of the history of Jerusalem. We went to the location of the Pool of Bethesda and read John 5:1-17 -look it up :) We still needed to use your imagination at the site since the conquering people built over old buildings. At the Pool of Bethesda, there were Byzantine ruins on top of the un-excavated sections of the Pools, but it was still great to see. Reading the story in John 5, it still shocks me on how ungrateful the invalid man was to Jesus. He seems sarcastic or bitter when answering Jesus’s question and then after he was healed, he tattled on Jesus to the Jews. How do you and I react to blessings from God? Side note: Also at that location was a church that had excellent acoustics. We learned it is best to sing deep and slow to enjoy the echo. We visited the church of the Holy Sepulcre, which is the probable location of Jesus’s crucifixion and burial. I hadn’t really thought about the fact the crucifixion and the burial place would be fairly close together but they theoretically would have been since they would have had a lot of time to bury Jesus. A church was built over the site which had all lot of relics, so I didn’t feel a connection to the site personally but it was interesting to learn about and just be in that location. According to my handy dandy pedometer, we walked about 6 miles today. So between that and the lingering jet lag, I think I’m going to sleep superb tonight. -HeidiPS Unfortunately, we are taking most of our pictures with our camera, not our ipod, and we forgot our camera cord, so there isn't a whole not of pictures to post yet. We'll try to do better tomorrow. The picture that is posted is of the city wall showing Jaffa Gate that goes around old Jerusalem. The wall was built in 1540 AD.