Israel, so far

As many of you know, I’m in Israel right now on a 10-day pilgrimage. I can’t begin to describe my excitement, nor will I ever be able to fully relay all that I’ve learned and experienced over here.

What this trip does for your faith—what it’s done for my faith--is indescribable.

We went to Joppa (Jonah 1; Acts 10) in Tel Aviv as soon as we landed. There we saw, “according to the tradition” (AttT; I’ll explain this at church as need arrives), the house of Simon the Tanner.

We spent the last two nights at Gennesaret (Matthew 14.34; cf. Dt 3). Yesterday started with a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee. That was an event I couldn’t have anticipated in my wildest dreams. Feeling the water splash up on my face as our group sang, “How Great Thou Art” brought tears to my eyes. It made Peter’s incident with Jesus outside the boat so much more vivid (Matt 14.22, ff)

We landed at Capernaum (Matt 4.13: Jesus’ home town) and spent the next two days touring the area of Galilee. Quick list of all that I can remember:

• 1st Century Capernaum synagogue; aka: Jesus’ church
• Golan Heights
• Tiberius
• Caesarea Maritima (Acts 10.1)
  
• Mt. Carmel (Elijah & the prophets of Baal)
• Valley of Armageddon (Rev 16.16)
  
• Megiddo
• Chorazin (Mt 11.somewhere...)
  
• Nazareth (John 1.46) :=)
  
• Cana (John 2; site of the first miracle)
• Mt. Tabor (Mark 9; site of the Transfiguration; AttT)
• Church of the Annunciation (1 of the first 4 Christian churches ever built)
• Site of the Multiplication (feeding the 5 thousand; AttT)
• Church/site of the Beatitudes/Sermon on the Mount (AttT)
• Drove through the West Bank on our way south to Jerusalem

Those are in no particular order, and I probably forgot half of what we’ve done so far. We go nonstop all day, so there is way too much to recall off the top of my head. I'm trying to type this as quickly as I can b/c I'm running out of prepaid internet time...

Not much more time to write right now, so I’ll update as I’m available. We go into the “Old City” (original Jerusalem) tomorrow.

-a happy pilgrim