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