It’s crazy.  This trip has been so incredible already and we just now got to Jerusalem!  I can’t wait!

Today as every other day we started insanely early and left our hotel on King David Street headed to the heart of Jerusalem.  The Temple Mount was the first stop of the day and it was an awesome one.  To even get into the area of the Temple Mount you have to go through security and walk past several guards and piles of riot shields just waiting to be used.  On the Temple Mount men and women are not allowed to be touching or kissing and it turns out that isn’t as easy as it sounds!  The Temple Mount was called Mount Moriah in the Bible and was the place that Abraham showed obedience to God and was willing to sacrifice Isaac.  The rock that this is said to have taken place on is now under the Dome Of The Rock.  Just south of that by a hundred yards or so is the Al Aqsa Mosque where the Moslems worship.  The Moslems built there in 691 A.D. and their dome which is still there today is the main thing you see when looking at Jerusalem.  They have several structures set up all over the place pointing east to Mecca as well.  There is another structure that is built that lines up directly with the Golden Gates and what would have been the Temple doors and many believe is the place of the Holy of Holies.  As we were leaving we went by the inside of the Golden Gates. The entrance has been blocked off because this is where the Messiah will enter back into the temple and the Moslems do NOT want that! Wow.

So that I don’t write all day long, I am going to move on to our next site.  We moved from the Temple Mount to the Kotel, Hebrew for The Wall.  The western world calls this the Wailing Wall, but the Jews would call it the Western Wall.  This the 150 feet that is left of the western wall of the second temple.  There are Arab houses built all the way up to and using the rest the wall.  When the Romans destroyed the temple they left the outer walls of it just to show off the magnitude of what they had done.  Later the Jews were allowed to weep here on the day of the destruction of the temples (hence the name Wailing Wall).  This was an incredible site to see.  The men are required to wear hats (kippas) here, but fortunately my baseball cap worked just fine.  It was awesome to see all the Jews here doing their rituals and praying.  The men and women are segregated with different portions of the walls to pray at.  There are always people praying at the walls and the amount of prayers written down and shoved into the cracks of the walls is amazing.  After some prayer and pictures it was time to go again.

Next up we walked along the excavation of the Western Wall which is taking place underneath the Arab housing.  This is incredible!  The size of some of these rocks is unbelievable.  It is crazy to see the things that they could work with and move without the use of the technology that we have now (and we would probably still screw it up!).  Along the way there is a gate that is the closest to the Temple as they can get.  This gate is constantly prayed over and next to by the Jewish women.  While excavating this tunnel, a major news network reported that the Jews were digging to get underneath the Dome Of The Rock and when they opened the exit 81 people were shot and killed by the Moslems.  Turns out they weren’t doing that.

After walking through this excavated tunnel underneath all the Arab housing, we took it a step further and took a nice cool walk down Hezekiah’s (absolutely not Hammas’) Tunnel.  This is a tunnel that was dug to divert water from the Gihon Spring to the Pools of Siloam (where those who were sick or in need of healing would sit and wait for the waters to be disturbed by an angel and then the first person in the pool would be healed) to prevent the water from leaving the city and letting the attacking Assyrians use it.  If you are claustrophobic, this is NOT for you!  The tunnel is about as wide as a normal sized man.  There are plenty of places that I had to turn sideways because it wasn’t wide enough at that point.  There were many places that I had to duck in order to not hit my head on the low ceiling of the tunnel (just ask KK…she has a good number for this).  Also there are no lights.  It is completely black and the water varies from ankle deep to thigh deep.  Pretty cool.  And my wife did an outstanding job!  She made it all the way through this pitch black tunnel that is a little more than 1748 feet long without any freaking out at all!  Such a champ…ette…or whatever!

The next stop was the Temple Institute.  This is a foundation that’s sole purpose is to inform about the temple as it was and prepare for the temple that the Jews believe is to come.  Wow.  We had Rabbi Glick as our “guide” and let me tell you.  This guy is passionate about what he believes!  They are preparing anything and everything that they can to help speed up the process of building the new temple when that time comes.  Everything is built to scale and ingredient!  They have 13 trumpets made of silver.  They have a $3 million menorah!  Seriously?  How has that not been stolen?  Each of the 7 arms of this menorah weigh 100 pounds are made of gold!  Wow.  This was really cool to see.

The final stop for the day was the Southern Steps.  Once again this was incredible to see.  The steps are made irregular (meaning they aren’t all exactly the same) so that you have to take your time and pay attention.  This causes you to think more about what you are doing and why you are entering the temple gates at the top of the Southern Steps.  There are two sets of gates here.  One is a triple gate which is the entrance and one is a double gate and is the exit.  If you were in need of anything, you would go in the opposite way (in the double and out the triple) and they Jews would know that you were in need and they would come to you and offer instead of you having to beg for it.  Really cool.  At the bottom of the steps there are the remains of ritual baths where they would bath themselves prior to entering the Temple of God.  Again.  Wow.

Have some pictures!

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Here are some of the pictures from Day 3 now that we have them!

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Holy crap the wake up call came far too early.  I forgot there was a 6:30 AM.  That was insane.  But, we have a ton to see.  Day 2 started off by heading out to Mount Arbel.  The view from here was another amazing site.  It overlooks the Sea Of Galilee, Magdala and Capernum.  There were lots of caves here that many of the Jews used to run from Herod The Great.  Magdala is the town that Mary Magdaline was from and Capernum was where Jesus based His ministry in Galilee.

Next up was Nazareth.  On the way there we drove through a town called Cana which is where Jesus turned the water into wine.  Nazareth is a pretty good sized city that is surrounding the old town of Nazareth which would have only had about 200 families or so.  This was the home of Jesus until he was 30.  There is an area with a couple churches that claim their spot is the location that Gabriel came to Mary to announce her pregnancy.  We got to visit a small synagogue in the middle of the old town where they believe Jesus preached from Isaiah and everyone got all upset about it and took Him out to kill Him.  They led Him out to Mount Precipice.

And therefore Mount Precipice was our next stop.  The mountain here overlooks some pretty awesome stuff.  It overlooks the town of Nazareth, Mount Tabor where they believe the transfiguration occurred and the Valley Of Jezreel or Armageddon.  Also in the distance you can see the mountains where Saul fought the Philistines and Gideon narrowed down his army to 300 men.  When Jesus preached from Isaiah in the synagogue that day and fulfilled prophesy.  The Jews didn’t like what He said and they banished Him from His home town.  Not only that but they took Him out to Mount Precipice with the intention of throwing Him off the top.  The Bible says he got away from them and moved on His way.  Other than the view, one of the crazy things from this place was a plaque that they have on display that says that Jesus jumped from the mountain to get away.  I had never heard that before.  Very interesting.  The Bible says that He went through them and left.  So its not completely clear what it was exactly that He did.  Doesn’t matter.  The point is that it wasn’t time for Him to get caught and killed and so He got away!

The final stop for Day 2 was a place called Megiddo.  It is also known as Har-Magedon which through several translations becomes Armageddon.  This is the valley in the Fertile Crescent that the Bible says will be the location of the battle of Armageddon that Jesus will lead.  The ruins in this place were crazy!  They have excavated enough to see that there were civilizations in Megiddo as far back as 2500 B.C.  It was a fortress there to guard the valley nearby.  Solomon had it rebuilt.  The ruins were incredible.  At one place you can see an altar that the Canaanites used to sacrifice animals and humans to the god Baal.  It was awesome and sobering at the same time!

Day 2 finally came to a close and it was back to the hotel to rest up a bit for Day 3!  Have some pictures.

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Aaaaaaaaaand we have lift off!  By the time you are reading this we will have taken off from OKC and are headed to the ATL and then to Israel…unless our flights are delayed!  We are so excited about this once in a lifetime trip (assuming we don’t ever do it again)!  We will be flying for a very long time and it will actually be tomorrow night there when we finally arrive.  Thank you for all your prayers so far!  Please continue to pray for our safety!  My wife told me she already wrote her blog for today so I may be saying all the same stuff, but what can you do.  Make sure you check back!  We believe we will have internet over there so that we can blog and post pictures for everyone!

PS – Jack we miss you!

Day 2 is now complete!  It was much different than Day 1.  This morning we got up (earlier than I ever like to get up…of course I don’t like getting up prior to 10 AM) and headed to Sulphur, OK to go to church with my brother-in-law’s family.  Small town church was much different than what we are used to, but we had a great time!  Just ask Ducky Day!  I bet you can ask my wife what the pastor talked about and she wouldn’t have a clue.  Apparently holding and staring at our new niece was much more important.  (I know, God.  I tried to tell her.  She wouldn’t listen to me.)

After lunch we made the short drive to Nebo, OK (yeah don’t even ask where that one is because I don’t believe it is actually on maps) to have lunch and spend some time with Toby, Stephanie, Tallie, and Taelyn.  Those girls are pretty cute.  After some great grilled quesadillas and m wife holding Taelyn for several hours we hit the country road to go meet up with Todd, Wendy and Cade Collinsworth in Ardmore, OK!  We don’t get to see them very often and wish we could convince them to move out to SoCal with us!  (I’m telling you guys, the mosquitos are none existent!)  Cade is huge (not fat…he is almost 3!)!  I had whole conversations with him!  Wow.  They just grow up so fast!  (sorry had to use the inevitability catch phrase)  After dinner at 2 Frogs and some great catching up we finally made it home in time to sleep some!  The end of Day 2.

Vacation has finally arrived!  My amazing wife finished all her packing spreadsheets and finally let me put all the stuff into suitcases!  I think I went to sleep around 1 AM Pacific time last night after all the packing of the clothes.  Now its time to sleep until almost 4 AM so that we can get up with enough time to get everything done and get to the airport in time!  Weeeeeeell…that didn’t quite happen.  Jack, our furry little kid, decided that he was hungry at 3 AM and started eating.  This isn’t that crazy, but last night he decided he wanted to play with his food, too (also normal).  Problem was that he was playing with it on top of the bed and more specifically on top of me.  Good times.  So Day 1 of vacation started a little earlier than I had hoped.

So after 2 hours of sleep last night, we got up, dropped off Jack at the Normans’ house and got dropped off at the airport.  We made it there with about an hour to spare.  That’s plenty right?  Well, Delta says that if you aren’t checked in 30 minutes prior to your flight, your bags won’t be on the plane.  Sweet.  We are there an hour early, yet still have to wait in line to check in because we don’t have a printer at home!  Doh!  So after waiting in the wrong line, KK basically cutting in front of some other line to get us checked in, and rearranging some luggage so that our bag was exactly 50 lbs. we finally made it to our gate as they were loading it up!  Woo!  Honestly wasn’t sure we were gonna make that one.  Off to Mini Apolis we go!  (yes I know that isn’t how you spell it, but I am gonna because I don’t wanna look it up and/or try and get it wrong so deal with it)

Blah, blah, blah, I can’t sleep on planes, trains, or  automobiles, it was a really long day, blah, blah, blah, bad chicken sandwiches, getting almost run over from behind by the airport golf cart that doesn’t have a horn and yet somehow it is still my fault, blah, blah, blah, we land it OKC!  (PS – If you don’t know this already, the OKC airport is named after Will Rogers who apparently never met a man he didn’t like…except for probably Wiley Post when he crashed the plan that killed them both in 1935.)  The in-laws arrived to pick us up from the airport and off we go to have some great pizza from Rodney’s in Purcell, OK.  For you Okies, Rodney is a guy that used to work at the world Famous Jo’s Pizza (also originating from Purcell…not Edmond) so it is pretty much exactly the same…except busier.  After dinner we checked out the construction of the in-laws new church building and headed back to make some of KK’s world famous chocolate chip cookies (thanks Wendy) for Sunday.  After the baking time we hit up one of the best snowcone places ever (really not sure why California doesn’t have these EVERYWHERE), got a tour of the awesome garden/farm, and capped it all off with watching the episode of The Price Is Right that I was in the audience for and pulling off one tick from each of us.  Blood suckers.  Good times!

If this is any example of the way this vacation is going to be, I’m gonna be exhausted!  Guess I’ll just have to head home to the beach and relax it all off afterwards!  I’m wiped!  Peace in the Middle East…really…because we are about to go there.

Ladies and gentlemen, would you please turn in your hymnals to page 333.  Sister Mildred, we’re gonna play, free at last, free at last, thaaaaaank God Almighty!

To steal a line from my mother, “and we’re off like a herd of turtles!”  (I’m really not sure what that means.  I guess we are leaving very slow?  Is that it?  Hmm…I’m not sure)  Well, maybe not quite, it is actually still in the middle of church right now, but as soon as we get through one more experience my wife and I are headed out for vacation with my family!  I’m not going to say the best part is that we are headed to the lake for a week because that would mean that my family isn’t the best part, but I really like the lake part!