Jerusalem & Bethlehem - Day 1 Israel

So like I said yesterday, I didn't realize how early we had to be up and going this morning.  We had to be in the theatre by 6:30 am to check in.  We were up and a little bleary eyed, but made it.  One nice thing, the bus ride was about 2-2 1/2 hours so the boys were able to get a little sleep on the way there.  Also I am going to let you know, there are quite a few pictures in this one, both David and I said Israel was the best excursion, probably because it meant the most to us and I probably won't be able to share it well with the words and pictures, but I will definitely try.

 

AJ and I ready for our long bus trip  ;-)

 

This was our fist view of Jerusalem.  You can see in the middle a big wall around the city.  Jerusalem is the capital and largest city.  To get an idea of the size of Israel - Lake Michigan is bigger than Israel.  Mt Olives is on the right of the dome in the picture, sorry you can't see it real well here.  We only did a half day in Jerusalem so we didn't see the first four stations of the cross.

 

Michael wasn't in a picture taking mood yet - so he grudgingly let me take one with the city behind them.

 

Then we drove down into the city.  Here is the city wall built by the Turks in 1541.  To go in you have to go through security, a metal detector and everything.  You also have to be dressed properly, women can't have bare shoulders or knees.

 

This is the wailing wall, which is 10% of the western wall.  This is extremely important to the Jewish people because it is the closest remains of the Jewish temple, their holy place.  It was destroyed by the Romans.  If you look closely, there is a wall separating men and women.  They can't go on the same side, they have to stay to their own side.

 

All the white spots on the walls are little pieces of paper.  It is said if you write down what you want or pray for it will come true if you put it in the wailing wall.

 

So the tour guide said we were extremely lucky, normally these roads are wall to wall people, literally you are shoulder to shoulder and you have a hard time getting through. 

 

Here is where station five of the cross happened.  I have to tell you it was really surreal to be walking the same place that Jesus walked so many thousands of years ago.  I know it looked completely different then but his feet walked the same places that our feet did and this was his last steps on this earth prior to his crucifixion.  Here is where Jesus dropped the cross and Simon helped to carry the cross up the hill.

A little farther down was station six, this is where Veronica wipes the face of Jesus and his face was imprinted on her napkin, it stayed.

 

 

Station seven was the gate to the outside of the city.  This is where Jesus fell the second time under the cross.  Because the streets were so empty and we were able to get through them so quickly the tour guide said we had time to go to the roof of the church where the pilgrims make their way into the church.  He said he normally doesn't have time for this because the roads are so packed it would have taken forever to get through.  Doing this we did miss station eight of the cross where the women cried for Jesus.

 

That is the top of the Church of the Holy Scepter pictured from station nine.

 

 

This is station nine where Jesus fell the third time.   By this time he was tired and exhausted and even with help was having a hard time getting up and walking. 

 

Here is David and Michael going through the roof where the pilgrims go when they come to Jerusalem.  I am guessing they were smaller back then as you can see David really has to bend over. 

 

Here we are in the courtyard outside the main entrance to the Church of the Holy Scepter.  This is one of the first four churches in the world.  This is where Jesus was crucified, buried and risen.  It is divided between nine churches for control.  Each church controls a certain part of the church and there are always arguments as to who controls what and each church trying to take more control.  The argument is so convoluted that there is one church that is responsible for a set of stairs and another that is responsible for the floor it runs down to and the two churches are arguing over who has control of the bottom step.  This church was built 300 years after Jesus was crucified. 

 

 

This is the Jerusalem cross.  It is said that Jerusalem is the center of the world and Christianity went to the four corners of the world.  Hence the shape of the Jerusalem cross.

 

This is where they took Jesus' robe and drew lots for his clothes, station ten.  It was on top of the hill.

 

 

This is station eleven where Jesus was nailed to the cross. 

 

Here at station twelve is where he took his last breath - where it took him 3 hours to die on the cross in pain and agony.

 

This is an Armenian Mosaic of what happened to Jesus

 

It was beautifully done.

 

This was particularly amazing, this is the stone where they laid Jesus' body and anointed him with oils.  His actual body was placed on this very stone.

 

 

AJ took a turn placing his hands on the stone.  There were people placing their foreheads and someone placed some type of cards on it, not exactly sure what those were.

 

Michael was a little hesitant at first touching it, not sure why, but then decided to.  The feel of the stone was so smooth and breath taking to think what happened all those years ago, right here in this spot.  I found out later that we were very lucky, a tour that came in after lunch was not able to get even close to this stone, one woman waited over fifteen minutes to try and get to it just to touch it.  All the books that you read about touring this church say that you will be shoulder to shoulder, almost not being able to breath.  But here we were with room to spare during our whole tour.  God definitely blessed us on our journey.

 

 

This was the tomb where Jesus was buried.  You can see people going inside it.  We would have liked to do that, but the line was about an hour or so long (usually about three hours) and with the tour we couldn't stay that long.  But what I also didn't realize was how close the tomb was to where he died.  It was literally about 300-400 yards if that.  In my mind it was always so much farther and I am not sure why.  It was always real to me, but to be able to see it and have a sense of where he walked, where he died and where he was buried made it even more tangible.

 

 

A long time ago it was thought that Israel was the center of the world because of where it was placed according to the surrounding countries and its importance based on geographic location in the region, more so, Jerusalem was the center of Israel and this spot is supposedly the center of Jerusalem so here the boys are touching the center of the world.  I got to touch it too but unfortunately we needed someone to take this picture.

 

Down on the bottom level of this church, any crusader that came left a cross on the wall.  As you can see here how many there are and this was just an extremely small portion of the crosses left on the walls.

 

When Jesus died the mountain cracked all the way down the mountain and his blood dropped on the skull of the first dead.  You can't see it really well, but we are at the bottom of the mountain and you can actually see the crack that went all the way down and the skull.

 

It was time for them to re-oil the lamps.  It was really neat to watch this and wasn't planned, but we caught it right as we were leaving this area.  He re-oiled it and then put a new candle in there singing the whole time.  I am not sure what he said because it wasn't in English.  He also was not waiting for anyone to finish looking, kind of pushed his way through.

 

On the other side of Jerusalem is the Jaffa gate.  Two architects built it and the ruler that had it built was so happy with it and thought it was so beautiful that he killed the two architects so they couldn't build anything else that beautiful.  That is the reason there are these two tombs inside the city walls.  It is rare that anybody be buried inside the city walls.

 

David and AJ outside the Jaffa gate.

 

Then after Jerusalem we headed for lunch.  It was a FANTASTIC lunch!!  I think it was some of the best food we had on our vacation.  Also I found it interesting that two of the people out front of this hotel had on side arms.  They were the ones welcoming people in, a little different than in the states.  Here are the boys happy after getting some food in their bellies and relaxing out of the heat.

 

Mikey and me!!  This picture just makes me smile!!!  After lunch we headed to Bethlehem.  It was a little bit of a drive, but not too bad.  We had to park the bus and walk for a little bit to get to the church that was built over where Jesus was born.

 

I couldn't help my self.  It is Israel's version of Starbucks. :-)  David and I thought it was hilarious!

 

Here we are going into the Church of Nativity where Jesus was born.  It was built by St Helen in 324 AD.  This is the Armenian section.  It survived all of the earthquakes in this area.  They are so strict about the dress code here that two people on our tour that didn't dress appropriately were not allowed in to the church.  They sold scarves for people to cover up with but I guess it wasn't worth the price here.

 

This roof if made from cedar trees and is over 1500 years old and yes this is the original roof.  He said the reason it has survived is because they have some give for when the earthquakes come.

 

This is a mosaic that they found beneath the floors.  It is thousands of years old and still in pretty good shape.

This is the front of the Armenian church, so decorated but a beautiful cross on top.

 

This is the famous church where Christmas Eve service for the Catholics is filmed.  Christmas is celebrated here three times, once for the Catholics, once for the Armenians and once for the Greek Orthodox since they all celebrate it on different days.  Again this church is run by many different ones all fighting for control.  We then went downstairs to see the place where Jesus was born.  We didn't get to go into the room, again because of time and the lines, but were able to see it.  It was amazing to be in the same place where He was born.

 

 

A beautiful stain glass on the way out of the church.

 

Here they are in front of the church and to the right side of the picture is a statue of St Gerome.  He has a skull under his foot to remind him to finish the translation before he dies.

 

This is a random statue right outside the church - it is the Patron saint of England, St George, who killed the dragon.  Our tour guide is not sure why it is here.  Our tour guide has a PhD in archeology which was great for the tour, he gave us great information that was biblical and a few scientific anecdotes to go along with the information.  He had a great way of telling the story of each place we went to.  To say the least it was an awesome day and full of so many huge parts of the Christian religion that it was hard to take it all in.   I am so glad we were able to see all of this and walk where Jesus walked.  I really am at a loss for words for how it affected me.  I just hope the boys one day realize the significance of where they were.