Dec 30, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Well, I have to admit, I got really emotional on a couple of the stops today, and this was one of them. Our first stop of day 2 was the Mount of Beatitudes, where Jesus preached His sermon about who are blessed. I couldn’t even make it through our devotion, it was too beautiful and peaceful and absolutely moving to be there. There is a beautiful church there of course, and there were groups there singing…one sang Silent Night, and I could hear it as I walked the grounds during our free time. Let me tell you, I lost it. It was such a beautiful place. They call it also the Mountain of Happiness. I can see why. I could have stayed there all day to soak it in and pray, no problem. Well, let me share some pictures.
Here is the place where we stopped to do devotions, by the church. Our tour guide, Mike, gave us a little history, and Pastor had a devotion and reading from Matthew 5 about the verses about this place and event in Jesus’ life. I couldn’t hold it together enough to participate….but I mean that in the best possible way. Then we went down the hill a bit and saw this view:
Yep. Pretty spectacular. We stopped under the trees which was a beautiful place to sit and reflect.
Another angle. Gotta love the cool calm and beautiful countryside of this hill.
Nice picture in the church of Jesus teaching. Above is a picture of a kneeler in front of a crucifix.
Inside pic of the dome.
Markers like this with each of the beatitudes were along the walkway to the church.
This is an olive tree. I don’t know why, but I found the leaves particularly beautiful. There were all kinds of birds from all over the place flying around, too. Pretty spectacular! The
Evan had an instant friend who tried very hard not to get off his lap, even after being kicked off.
Here is a cool tree I held up for a second.
One more cool scenery picture…and then a picture of our luxury ride, which I haven’t shown yet. Our driver really is amazing, our guide Mike too.
OK, next up is Chorazin….
Dec 29, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Last stop before the hotel today was the Church of the Annunciation and St Joseph’s Church in old-city Nazareth. This would have been Jesus’ home town area. The Church of the Annunciation is in honor of where Mary lived at the time the angel came to visit her to let her know that she had been chosen to be Jesus’ mother. Under the church is a cave system where the people lived during that time, about 200 people. The place that is thought to be Mary’s home is preserved and honored as a place of worship. The place where Joseph is thought to have lived is a long stone’s-throw away, also in caves under a church honoring him.
We started with a devotion in front of the church which was built in the 1960s. There are ornate mosaic tile pictures from all kinds of countries in the world depicting the Virgin Mary. Very cool. Not a great picture of the church, but I love that kid….
Here is a much better picture of the front of the church. Hard to take it all in…so much detail. Under the archway is this door…
Depicting events of Jesus’ life. Very cool. Also under there was this door leading to another part of the church. It depicts Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac on the bottom. The guy is our tour guide, Mike. Cool guy! Knowledgeable, and giving us a great tour. And I have to give a shout out to our driver Hasim…dude can thread a tour bus through the eye of a needle if need be, for real!!
So this is the area they have cordoned off…we couldn’t go in…where it is historically accepted as Mary’s home, in this cave. I mean to tell you, I would LOVE to go in there and check that out. Man, was it neat. Just outside of this area was some decoration on the rock from the period…
And above it was this…
Neat, right? There are many more pictures I took, I’m just trying to tell the story and post a few here, but there was lots more neat stuff to see.
This was an area we could look down into…this would be the roof area of the caves underneath where the people lived…if I have it right. The holes would be to collect rain water etc. I would have loved to go down there and walk around. NOPE.
Evan liked this part too, he was trying to get pictures of as much as he could. Don’t blame him, it was neat.
Between Mary’s home and Joseph’s home is a convent for Franciscan nuns. A short way up the hill is Joseph’s home, and now church honoring him, too.
Copper statue of Joseph. Where people touch his knees, the green wears off. Wait, might be bronze. Not sure now…took in a lot of information today!
On the side of St Joseph’s church. This area is where Jesus lived when he was in Nazareth, y’all. Yep.
What I picked to show from the pictures I took from under the church…steps down into the caves where it is thought Joseph lived. Again, wish we coulda gone down there. Whoa was it cool.
This shows about how far Joseph’s church/home is away from Mary’s. That gray dome is Mary’s home, and I’m standing in front of Joseph’s, pretty much. 
Here is a better side view of the Church of the Annunciation.
After that, we left for the hotel. We drove through Cana, yep, of the miracle, but didn’t stop, nothing there to see…
Then on our way, we caught our first glimpse of the Sea of Galilee…
Tomorrow we will be on it, in a boat! Lots of other cool things to see tomorrow…it’s getting very late here…time to go to bed. Come back tomorrow for more cool stuff to see! Thanks for reading!
Dec 29, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
After lunch we went to Mt Precipice. The corresponding Bible reading is Luke 14, when they wanted to throw Jesus down and kill Him. Let me tell you, the average Joe would not survive being thrown over the side of this thing, there are really nasty jagged rocks all the way down.
Neat cross on top, this is holy ground because we know Jesus was here, probably many times. It is right by Nazareth, now a half hour drive across the Jezreel Valley.
Look how high we are. BTW, ignore the Nazareth waste water treatment facility on the left in the valley…
Nice photo op of me and the offspring…I love that boy. We are having the best time!!!
This is the inscription at the top, three different times in three languages.
Nazareth is the overlook on the other side. In Jesus’ time, Nazareth had around 200 people…now 200,000.
On to the next stop…the Church of the Anunciation and the Church of St Joseph.
Dec 29, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Still before lunch today, we went to Tel Megiddo. Tel means like “mountain”. It’s the foundations of 25 cities all built on top of one another, so it’s up a ways now, like a mountain. The oldest part of the excavation was the gate to the city from 6,000 years ago, around 4000BC. One of my favorite things today, I must say. It’s so narrow so it’s easy to defend. This is cool.
The steps go up, and then narrow and turn so the entrance can be easily blocked and defended. This was here 6000 years ago…what? That’s AWESOME.
This was the city gate, higher up, during Solomon’s time. It had a series of 3 places where doors could be shut. The sidewalk was made uneven on purpose, as a defense, so you HAVE TO look down while you’re walking on it or you will break an ankle. I was looking and almost did anyway.
So this is the valley of Armageddon. It comes from Har Meggido…Har meaning mountain. This is the Jezreel Valley, and across it and the light colored tops of the mountain range to the left is Nazareth. The mountain on the right is getting into Samaria, and the mound in the middle off in the distance is Mt Tabor, or the Mount of Transfiguration. So check this out. When Jesus did his Transfiguration thing…He had Moses and Elijah there with him on either side, right? If you are standing where I took this photo and look left, you see this:
See at the very top of that mountain peak the little white dot? That is where Elijah defeated the pagan priests by drowning his offering in water and God still started it on fire, when Asherah or whichever god they were trying to get to light their sacrifices failed. Over off to the right from this is where Moses was taken to heaven. That is some cool stuff.
The large circular group of rocks down there in the excavation is a pagan sacrifice altar. When they excavated that area, they found thousands of animal and human bones from the sacrifices. Whoa.
That white stone in the distance is likely an Asherah pole. Lots of pagan worship in those days here. Although, when King Josiah was here, he came in and knocked down all the pagan stuff. When they excavated it, they set this one back up. Pastor said an Asherah pole would be about waist height and 16 inches square…about like this. That would be what the pagans would sacrifice to her on.
OK, since I grew up on a farm with grain bins…this was cool to me. It’s a grain silo…and if you look really close, you can see the spiral stairs along the outside wall of it, so they could walk down to the bottom to get the grain as it went down from use. Those are some seriously narrow stairs, like a foot wide. Seriously, gotta have some sure feet!
This is the way down to the spring fed water system of Megiddo. They made underground tunnels to run it in from a spring, even if the city was under siege. We went down 187 steps into this tunnel, I mean WHOA. I had a death grip on the rail because it was wet and slick and steep, and one false move and you’d still be rolling down those steps with everyone below you tumbling too. So neat to see. Check this out.
Down, down, down.
Into the tunnel.
And there’s me. : )
Then we went up a few steps to come out the other side, and the bus driver took us back over for schnitzel on pita bread lunch with fries and a coke. There were some toppings on that I didn’t recognize, but all in all, it was tasty. Evan had his plain…similar to a fried chicken sandwich.
OK, on to the next place, Mt Precipice!
Dec 29, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
We did a very very short stop to see the remnants of the aquaduct system used to get fresh water to Caesarea. Water traveled 5 miles from Mt Carmel to provide water to the city. It was a short stop, but cool…we collected some neat shells on the shore and got some neat pictures. There was also all kinds of period pottery shards everywhere from the construction, so we got some of that too.
Our crew again under the aquaduct support system.
Ran for 5 miles, a lot of it like this. Cool!
Just me and my offspring, having a fun day! 
I forgot to post this on the Caesarea blog, and it’s getting late and I have a long way to go yet, so I’m being lazy…but this is cool. This is a period manger/trough made out of sandstone. Would be just the right size for a little baby Savior, methinks! This one was in Caesarea though…not the one Jesus was in…but still neat.
Dec 29, 2019 | Nancy’s Holy Land Trip 2019-20
Our first stop today after leaving Netanya was Caesarea to the north. Caesarea was built up just before the time of Jesus around 22BC. It was built as a port city by Herod the Great. This is the Herod that was not real excited about the birth of a new king rumor and started killing infant boys when Jesus was born. Ya, that guy. I don’t think he’s that great…anyhow.
We started off with a movie about the area, and for about the first 400 years after it was there, it was Christian, in the Byzantine Era if I remember correctly. There are Christian artifacts there like this pillar top:
Around 400AD is when the Muslims came in and destroyed the entire city and everything in it. They didn’t want any real evidence of what had been there so they really did a number on the place, breaking all the stuff. They kinda looted stuff too, and some of the marble from Caesarea was actually used in the construction of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Still, there was this statue there from the Christian time…Jesus as the Good Shepherd:
There is also a marble “big foot”. No, not a Sasquatch. A big foot…
Around 750-ish AD there was a huge earthquake that destroyed the port, so it’s under water. What is still there, although smaller than it was due to damage, is the hippodrome, and the theatre. The hippodrome was for horse/chariot racing, and the theatre is really cool too, although a big portion of it is being redone.
The bottom few layers of stone in the seating area are from the time of Herod.
Paul was tried in Caesarea. The room wall footers in the pics are where the Romans would have likely held prisoners, so a decent chance that Paul was inprisoned right here. 
This is the hippodrome. The area right above the group of people is where the prefect of the time would have given his thumbs up or thumbs down to say who lived and died after the races. 
Mosaic floor tile from the period…how cool is that!!!
Here is our crew in the seats in the theatre. Great group to travel with! Evan and I are in the third row up on the left.
OK, more to come!
