TODAY! (shabbat)

Sorry sorry sorry I keep meaning to do Jordan, but life keeps plowing ahead and I have Jordan all in my journal so it will be up soon hopefully. In the meantime though a lot has happened. Today was an amazing Shabbat as usual. There was a huge group on an LDS study tour that came to church which is always fun.

After church I headed out with the group to the Garden of Gethsemane. We walked along through the Orson Hyde gardens to get there which are beautiful on the hill. As we were walking though we met some Palestinian kids and were talking with them for a little bit and their mom came out and invited us in, but said we would on our way back. Anyway, like every other holy place around here where it's been passed down that supposedly some event in the scriptures took place there, some church builds a church. Here is inside the church at the garden. The paintings/mosaics/etc. are always so beautiful inside and here is the central point. You can see Christ in the middle there. 

The actual Garden of Gethsemane wasn't much. I guess I was expecting more, but it was a little courtyard of trees and there were paths around them, but we couldn't even go inside and walk on the paths around the trees. The thing that was amazing though is the beauty of the olive trees. They are so old and knotty and each is so unique! One was even held up part way by a stone structure someone had built. 

We were really looking for a place to sit down to read and journal. There happened to be another beautiful garden across the street that is private, but we heard that BYU students are allowed to go in. That turned out to be true and the guy unlocked it for us, so we were able to spend some time in there. It was so peaceful and the birds were chirping a lot and it was so warm that it felt like spring! They had beautiful olive trees in this garden too though they weren't as old. One of them is shown below: (the old olive trees had really thick trunks)
I was thinking today walking around how I expected to feel a connection as we visited all of these special places, but that I didn't feel anything special usually. At first I was kind of disappointed almost until I realized that the places don't even really matter. I don't build my faith off of a place where supposedly a scriptural event happened, but that it's the study of the event itself that we've been doing at the Jerusalem Center that does. 

We were there for about an hour just each sitting in a different spot around the garden. 
Then on the way back we did stop at the kids' house. Their mom/aunt came out and invited us in, so we went in and chatted for probably an hour. More and more kids trickled in so that there were cousins of the family and then the mom's sister in law and her kids too and then two girls 16 and 17 that came in. It was so fun to sit with them and ask questions and learn about their lives. Luckily Tamarra was with us and she took an intense Arabic class last semester and since they learn English in school it wasn't hard to communicate.

It was just a whole different feeling being in their home with them because their mom was able to take off her head covering being inside her home and it was just more comfortable than trying to talk to people in the street. She was so gracious and served us the best juice I've ever tasted. The little kids were so cute too and before we left the girls picked flowers to give us from right outside. They invited us to lunch and so we're probably going back to have lunch on Thursday with them! I'm so excited! Here I am with one of the little girls and my roomie Shamra! (Sorry I can't remember all of their names right now)