Day 1 - June 9

Thursday June 9, 2005

Well we left Tuesday night (4 am) from Calvery Church on a big shuttle bus. Rob and Robert Wynalda, Dr. Lawrence, Ted McCully, Josh Elyea, Beka Osbun and I were the group from WCBC added to a group total of about 50 people. We arrived at the Chicago airport later that morning and went through tight security at EL AL Airlines. We flew on a huge 747 with a second story and the main floor had 4 center rows (seats) then 3 seats in each row on each side of it. We all got our own TV. They fed us like 4 meals over the course of the flight. It took us about an hour to get to New Jersey then stayed on the plane there while other people loaded then had about an eleven hour flight to Tel Aviv. Well we got here safely! Praise God! After we collected our luggage and everyone in the group, we hopped on a big charter bus to go to our first site. The time difference is about 7 hours from EST but we wanted to quickly get into this time zone, so we started hiking! We drove about 15 minutes and stopped first at an olive grove. Kent Dobson talked about the uses for olives. He is trying to get us to view things from an Eastern way of thinking. How the people were thinking and reading when the Bible was written. So first we determined the uses and importance for the olive (oil, give light). They gave light just like the Israelites were supposed to be the light on the hill that could not be hidden. Also, the leaves on the olive branch are green on one side and have sort of a shiny, silvery back so when they blow in the sun, it shines. One ore thing he stressed was where Jesus talks about Him being the root of the tree and Israel, His people, were the branches. The only way we, as gentiles, can have a strong root is to be grafted into that tree (Romans 11:11...) next we walked up a hill which used to be a part of the city of Gezer. We learned a bunch of Geography (Coastal Plain, Shephelah, Judah Mountains, Judah Wilderness, Rift Valley) Next we walked to a different part of Gezer where the archaeologists dug down (believed that Gezer had been destroyed and rebuilt 27 times) to where Solomon's Palace once stood! We peed in one of the rooms here! =) After that, we went to the erected stones. These were uncut stones that were stood on end to remember events or covenants. These were called Masaba (pl:Masaboat). Later on in the Bible, God commands they not be used any more because people tended up worship the stones rather than remember the event and God's work like their original intent was. Then we ate lunch. After lunch we drove in the bus to see a Gan. Gan means garden in Hebrew. It was SO different from what we think of as a garden being! This was on a hillside, made in many horizontal layers (steps). Different families "owned" a different part of it and it required a ton of work to keep something like this good! He has us all read verses relating to a Gan so we could "re picture" it in our minds. Some were from the Garden of Eden but one of my favorites was Isaiah 5:1-7. It was just crazy how it was almost EXACTLY what we were seeing (wine press, watch tower...) After that he had us all grab a rock and each of us placed one on a wall that had been started by Kent's previous groups. he wanted to show the amount of work it takes to build up a wall or Gen and how easy it would be to sort of ignore it, but if they didn't work really hard at it and keep it up it would be ruined for future generations. After the Gen we headed to our first hotel. We get to shower, pee in a toilet, eat at a table and sleep lying down! Hooray! ha ha it's only been two days without that stuff. Ended up being a pretty good dinner, some type of breaded chicken and over cooked noodles. Sleep was very nice until the freaky wake up call!