Holy Week

Well, what a week! As you know, this was Holy Week in Jerusalem, beginning with Palm Sunday, including Good Friday, and finally culminating with Easter today. I realized that I haven’t spent an Easter at home since 2005! How crazy is that?! The week was both a unique and inspiring time to be in the Holy Land. For Palm Sunday, thousands of pilgrims (religious tourists) from all across the globe came and walked together from the Mount of Olives (just a few blocks away from home) into the old city through Lion’s Gate. In a culture where Christian culture seems sparse and fragmented, it was awesome to worship in a unity of faith with pilgrims of many different denominations. For that short while, differences seemed to go away. We walked for about an hour, singing songs the whole way, both our own LDS hymns and songs others were teaching us. We marched next to some Egyptian Christians who tried to teach us a song in Arabic. We finished up at St. Anne’s church (which is right next to the pools of Bethesda and has AMAZING acoustics)

Monday we had a field trip where we visited many of the Christian sites around Jerusalem. We’ve been to most of them before, but this was the first time we did so as a class. One of our stops was the Church of the Redeemer, which is a Lutheran church right next to the Holy Sepulcher. We stopped to sit and talk in a chapel, and so obviously we had to pull out their hymn books and start flipping through. Hehe. Anyhoo... this thing was a treasure chest! It had "Come Thou Fount...", "Amazing Grace", "I Know that My Redeemer Lives" and many more AWESOME hymns!

Wednesday was an awesome field trip to the Separation Wall by the West Bank. Our guide was an international lawyer from the US who is now a government advisor here in Israel. It was mind opening, to say the least. More and more, I'm realizing that if I leave here still trying to pick a side, I've missed the whole point.

Wednesday night was also the informal talent show, which I'm on the committee for. After hours of stressing and planning, our brain-child became a reality; and if I do say so myself, it was GOOD!!! Anything that ends in an impromptu dance party is automatically a success... even if it did include me cross-dressing as well as pretending to be a piece of bread. Ahem... anyhoo...

Thursday we had a field trip to some fields overlooking Bethlehem, which are cool to picture as the Shepherd's fields. A friend and I planned a nativity program (with tons of hymns, of course). It was touching to read the Christmas story together (which in reality is the early spring story anyway, so we did it right!!!) overlooking the town of Bethlehem.

Good Friday we got permission to leave the center in the morning to participate in the Via Dolarosa walk, which is Christ's final walk to Golgatha. After 5 minutes I decided to leave... it was WAY to crowded. Remember how I talked about Palm Sunday and how everyone was happy and united? Well on Friday it was absolute chaos, with people shoving every which way. I have learned that waiting in line is an American thing not recognized anywhere else. Here, shoving prevails. I was also a bit put off by the actor depicting Jesus absolutely covered in fake blood. I am quite aware that Christ's sacrifice was a gruesome thing, but it almost seemed sacrilegious. So for the rest of the day we did church-hopping, just testing out the acoustics at different churches.

Saturday was a great Sabbath. We had a fast & testimony meeting (our last one here, in fact) without any sunday school or priesthood afterwards. I used the free time to go to Gethsemane for a while, and then went with a group to Dominus Flevit (which commemorates when Jesus cried out "O Jerusalem...") where we, what else, SANG!!! Then we got back in time for dinner, followed by the first session of general conference!

And then, we get to today. I woke up at 5:30 (I know, who would've thunk?!?!) to watch the sunrise over the city. Of course, I figured out that the because the run rises to the east, and the center faces west, I couldn't actually watch the sunrise as intended... but it was still special to sit alone, watching the city slowly brighten. I went to the 9am service at the Garden Tomb, which was more of a modern Protestant worship service, with the rock band and everything. Still, that was cool. From there we went to St. Stephen's where we came in and saw a priest leading a choir practice! So, we ended up staying for the entire french mass!!! Then we had lunch with a random couple from UT who heard us singing and wanted to take us out to lunch!!!

Sigh... life is awesome. Unexpected, unpredictable, and yet is still awesome. Friends, I am off to Jordan tomorrow to spend the week there. I'll do my best to keep an excellent journal so I can share specific experiences with you. I love you all, and I'll see you soon.