Week 3

Hello Family!

On Saturday we went as a group to visit the Garden Tomb. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was a real garden- very green, with lots of trees and waterfalls, benches and statues. We were given a tour by one of the British men that volunteers there (it’s run by the Church of England). He was pretty funny but also very sincere. We went and got our pictures in front of the tomb (which looks exactly like all the pictures) and then went to this area they had set aside for us to sing hymns. As we sang, people would stop and tape us. One lady came up to us as we were leaving and asked if we were a choir, we were just that good.

On Sunday, we had a free day, so I went with some of the Hebrew speakers to meet up with an Israeli BYU student who’s back in Israel for the summer. We just walked around West Jerusalem, practicing Hebrew and did our Hebrew homework. We were assigned to ask 3 different people for directions to the Central Station and to find out where and how much laundry detergent was. Everyone I talked to responded in Hebrew and I actually understood what they said! It was very exciting and makes me feel a little less nervous about talking to the locals. I still have a lot to work on, but it’s not as intimidating as it once was. I ended the day with a call to Mom for Mother’s Day.

Monday was our field trip day and we went down to the Negev. We stopped at 3 spots: Laqiyah weaving factory, Beersheba, and Tel Arad. The Laqiyah weaving factory is run by an organization that’s trying to empower Bedouin women and give them an education- practical and school. So they card and spin wool, goat, and camel hair, dye the yarn, weave it into rugs, tents, pillows, bags, etc and then market them to earn money for their communities. It’s a women-run organization and the woman who is in charge of it is a Bedouin woman who wanted to make a change in her community. When she started, no one thought it would come to anything, but now she speaks English, knows a lot about marketing and finance, and has a very large support group in the Israeli Knesset. She was telling us how they had displayed their work at this UN thing in New York a few weeks ago and filled orders from people all over Europe and the Middle East. After this we drove over to Tel Beersheba, which you might recognize from the Bible as the place where Abraham had a well. We didn’t see his well, because it’s in the modern city of Beersheba and we went to the Tel. Let me tell you what a Tel is. It is an ancient city that’s been covered up by land. There are often many layers to Tels because ancient peoples would just build a new city on top of the ruins of an old city. We got to walk into and through this cistern they uncovered and pretend to sacrifice each other on the cultic alter on site. We then drove to Tel Arad. It’s a city built on a giant hill and it’s cool because they uncovered a perfectly preserved Israelite satellite temple. It was so windy! It almost blew me over and at one point no one could take notes because the wind was pushing so hard.

Tuesday night was the beginning of Shavuot, the Jewish Festival of Weeks, or you might know it as Pentecost. It signifies the day that Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the stone tablets. Jews stay up all night reading Torah. The Hebrew students got special permission to stay out past curfew and go to one of the places. It kind of felt like we were prisoners escaping jail or rebels with permission, just the 6 of us leaving late at night and coming back early in the morn. All the synagogues, yeshivas, and community centers were packed. We went to this one place where they had lectures going on all night. We had time to go to 2 of them, one in Hebrew and the other in English (midnight is the end of my ability to understand Hebrew so we went to the only one in English). The English one was very interesting: this rabbi talked about why Jews are persecuted and why it’s the only true religion. They’re persecuted because everyone is jealous of the Torah and it’s the true religion because it’s the only religion where it’s whole body of members heard the voice of God. Other religions, he said, only have a select few who heard God’s voice and spread the word. If that’s true, by that argument we are the true Church. I think of the Saints in Kirtland, who witnessed so much, and how every member has access to the Holy Ghost and is told in the scriptures that they can see the face of God.

One last thing, on Wednesday night, we had a presentation by my Old Testament teacher about the trip to Turkey. He went through our itinerary and showed us all the places we’d see and our hotels. We will be staying in some pretty luxurious hotels, some will beachfront property. And the views! It’s going to be gorgeous, and I’m sure my blog post next week will be way longer than it should be!

Love you all! Have a good week- I know I will!

Kelby

May 10th Letter

Hello hamishpakhah sheli!

That’s how we say “my family” here in Jerusalem! It’s been an awesome week-and-half since we got here. Some days I feel like I’ve lived here forever. The people at the center and in the city are generally very nice. I’ve learned that you can’t start talking to a shopkeeper unless you plan on buying something from them, because they get really offended if you waste their time. I’ve learned that if I don’t want something, I just need to walk away, because if you start talking- even to say no thanks- they automatically assume that you’re starting to barter and they’ll start bringing the price down. I didn’t mean to buy a scarf yesterday but the man wouldn’t let me leave until I did. I got him down to half the price he originally had it at, though, so I’ve learned indifference and saying no are the keys to good bartering.

We’ve had all our classes at this point and they seem mostly manageable. I’ve heard that it’s impossible to do all the readings, so you have to pick and choose and learn to skim. My Hebrew classes are going better than I thought they would. Shlomit teaches our conversation class and she talks really fast, but she explains the words we don’t know without ever speaking a word of English- and actually makes us understand. Our Israeli history class is by Ophir. This is the class I was most worried about because it employs a vocabulary I’m unfamiliar with, but he does a very good job of bringing it down to our level. I don’t understand every word that either teacher says but I know a lot more than I thought. I think all my classes should be very interesting. Probably the only class I was excited for that now I’m uncertain about now is the Palestine History class. We’ve only had two classes and all he’s done is rant about how Americans are narrow-minded and put all of Islam in a box and how we (specifically) hate Muslims. I thought it was a little ironic that he spent 4 hours stereotyping us. I hope he moves on and actually talks about Islam soon or it’s going to be a long summer in his classroom.

So far I’ve been to see the Tower of David Museum (a huge tower along the wall that is in ruins you can walk around), a few different churches, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Nabi Samwil (some ruins on a hill where Prophet Samuel was supposed to have wandered), the Western Wall, and I’ve seen Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, Gibeon (where Joshua commanded the sun and moon to stop), and the Jordan River in the distance. We just got back from the Western Wall tonight, where we got to watch and participate with the Jews as they ushered in Shabbat. I went and touched the wall, watched the men dance and pray on their side, and was pulled into a couple dancing and singing circles on the women’s side. It was a really neat experience to see the Jews and their devotion.

We go to Turkey in a week and I’m really looking forward to seeing that. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Look forward to talking with you on Saturday!

Love, Kelby

1st 24-hours in Jerusalem

So I arrived safely last night in Tel Aviv. It was extremely hazy and then it rained on our way to Jerusalem, so we couldn’t really get a good view of Israel on the drive. It took us a little less than an hour to get to Jerusalem. Once we got to the center, we had a little orientation meeting, a tour of the center and ate dinner before going to bed. It took a while to get unpacked and showered before I could go to bed. I didn’t have any problems sleeping though! I slept for most of the night and when I got up, my roommate told me we could see the Dome of the Rock from our room. That was when I started to really get excited that I was really here!

We had a brief orientation meeting before we left for a walking tour of the city. We walked to the old city, through Damascus gate, around the shops, back out through the Jaffa gate, and through a little bit of West Jerusalem. Then they had vans to drive us back to the Center. Total, it was only about a 3 ½ mile walk, which just shows how close together it all is! We had to cross over the Kidron Valley to get to the old city, the Mount of Olives is next door, and all of these awesome, historical, significant places are within walking distance! It’s pretty crazy. When we got back from our walk, we had lunch and now I’m writing during our little break.

My roommates and I will probably get along just fine. Actually, the roommate I was worried about might be the less drama-filled of the two. It just goes to show that you never really know who you can live with. Everyone is very friendly and seems to be in small-chat mode. I’ve had the same conversation with essentially everyone here, yet it is always interesting. Everyone is very different and are here for different reasons but they are here. So we all have something in common. I’m already looking forward to the rest of the summer.