A view of the southern half of the city.
The northern half of the city.
One of our favorite quick stops is at Aroma Espresso Bar. Their signature "Aroma" drink is a latte with cocoa and chunks of chocolate. It's incredible!
While we were stopped at the Mount of Olives, you could take a short ride on a camel for a few dollars. This one's name is Kojak.
A view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.
This olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed before his arrest and crucifixion is 2,000 years old. Remember, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and cut down all the trees and leveled the city. Anyone who's tried to kill an olive tree in their yard knows how difficult it is to keep them from growing back. The stump in the center is over 2,000 years old and would have been a tree in the Garden when Jesus was there praying. After the trees were cut down for wood and only the stumps were left, several shoots grew out of the stump and even the stump grew up in the center. It's a cool picture of Romans 11 and how the Church is grafted-in to Israel.
Pastor David Landry of CC Casa Grande teaching at Bet Shemesh. This is where Samson was born. Read the story of Samson and Delilah in Judges 13-16.
This is the Elah Valley, where David slew Goliath in 1 Samuel 17.
A photo of the dry creek bed (flows when it rains) in the Elah Valley where David would have picked up the 5 smooth stones before he killed Goliath. We picked up some stones here, and they're still all pretty smooth!
We've sure been having a great time on this tour. Remember, we're not on a "normal" tour because we've been able to break away from the group and do some cool things on our own. I hope you can join us next March 1-12 when Calvary takes another group to Israel. We're actually planning on 2 tracks (or 2 levels) on this upcoming tour.
We'll have a regular tour with the most common sites people visit (like last year's tour) and then a 2nd track for those who've been to Israel before and would like to see some of the less common sites where groups don't always get to go. We'll most likely still be all staying together at the same hotels and we'll have times of teaching at the bigger sites with everyone together, but the 2nd track folks will visit other sites of biblical significance instead of the most common sites that they may have seen already. The cost should be about the same for the 2nd track, we're still working out the details.
We'll probably start official registration for the tour in a couple weeks, pray about joining us!
Shalom!
