Israel: Day 2

Day 2!! This is when we really started touring ALL day! The first day, we leisurely went to church, then spent some time at Joppa and Caesarea Maritima and went back to the hotel.  No one was really wiped out after that day, but the exhaustion was starting to set in after this day!

We stayed at the Scots Hotel in Tiberias,

overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

This is part of the breakfast buffet.

There are salads and cheeses at breakfast!

This is the AMAZING machine that gave us fresh squeezed orange juice every morning!

Baked Cheesecake for breakfast!

I know I took a lot of pictures of food,

but how can I not with a Mom like this?

This is the Church of the Annunciation

It's believed this is where Mary's childhood house was.

Also, where Gabriel told Mary she would have Jesus.

What is believed to be Mary's childhood house surrounded by

The Church of the Annunciation

Inside the church of the Annunciation,

Many countries sent their interpretation of what Mary

 looked like at the time of the Immaculate Conception.

This is the U.S.A's, flashy, of course...

Maggie, Emily and Me trying to get a picture :)

This was Nazareth Village!

 They've set up a museum, of sorts.

They've brought to life many parables and

have preserved parts of what

 Jesus' life would have been like.

For example, above

is what a carpenter's shop would have looked like.

Olive trees that they harvest every year!

A shepherd and his sheep and goats behind him

"Yallah!" :)

A tomb, not quite what Jesus' was like,

but this one is actually in a setting that we imagine.

Even the Garden Tomb

(where many believed that Jesus died),

is commercialized a bit.

The surroundings here make it easier to

imagine what the tomb would've looked like back then.

Oh, this is Amer, our tour guide for Nazareth Village

 ("My name is half of America, that's my claim to fame"),

but that's not the purpose of the picture.

He's standing in the wine press that was found here

 and is most likely the source of the parable in Matt. 21:33

This was my favorite part of Nazareth Village.

It depicts the parable of the Sower! (Matthew 13)

You can see some plants sprouting up

through cracks on the path,

and also thriving plants in the good soil.

Read the passage and you will "get" it.

This is an olive press!

Nazareth Village still uses this when they harvest their olives.

Usually a donkey or ox would push the press,

but the boys had to prove they could do it ;)

Ah! This is Tel Meggido (In Hebrew, it's Har Meggido)

Translated into English- Armageddon(Revelation 16:16)

Armageddon is the final battle will take place

(in the valley in the next picture...)

What's significant about the place in the picture above,

is that 17 different civilizations

have built on top of each other here.

A "tel" is a place that had a city built, then was conquered

and the conquerors built on top of that city.

This cycle continued at least 17 times in this place!

I kept thinking "It looks so peaceful now!)

This is looking out from Mt Carmel.(1 Kings 18:16-45)

This is where Elijah challenged Baal's followers

 to sacrifice to Baal.

They tried and tried, but nothing happened.

Elijah poured 4 jars of water on his altar,

 and God still sent fire down from Heaven.

We worshipped up here and all just felt God's power.

You can't be at a place like that and not be moved

by how powerful our God is!

That night, we went and sat on the wall

that surrounds the courtyardof the Scots.

It's quite a ways up, and I was quite scared I would fall.

It overlooked the Sea of Galilee.

We could barely make out the Sea,

because it was so dark, but we all knew it was there.

For over an hour, we sat there praising God.

People were walking on the road underneath us and stopped

and listened- we even got an "Amen!"

Matt had SO many songs memorized!

This is overlooking the Sea of Galilee the next morning.

Yes, the SEA OF GALILEE!

Crazy!

-K