sprinting

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned him before, but one of my most favorite people here is our Doctor Brother Chapman. Well he gave us some good advice the other day. He told us that when you run a race you don’t jog the last stretch, you sprint. So now that we have less than two weeks here we really are on our last stretch and we need to start sprinting. I’ve taken that to heart and I’ve been living it up this past week.



Wednesday we had our Christian Quarter field trip. This was a field trip in the Old City where we went to different early Christian churches. It was good to finally move on to something more familiar to us. We first went to the Franciscan monastery called Terra Sancta. It was beautiful! Then we went to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer where we sang Lutheran hymns and loved it. We went to the Church of St. Mark next which is a Syrian Orthodox church commemorating the Last Supper. The lady who spoke to us there was a little intimidating… She got very mad at some of us for crossing our legs and taking pictures. She did sing the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic though which was really cool since that’s the language Christ is believed to have spoken. The church is believed by the Syrian Orthodox to be the home of Mark’s mother Mary, the site of the Last Supper, and the place where the apostles were filled with the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. That’s some cool stuff! Next we went to a Russian church with beautiful paintings. They discovered a gate there which they believe to be the gate to the Old City which Christ would have walked through bearing His cross. Next to the gate was a smaller hole which some people think may have been what Jesus was referring to when He said that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than go through the eye of a needle. I still think he meant a literal eye of a needle, but it was still interesting to see. Our last stop for the day was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This was probably my fourth time going there but it really doesn’t get old. There is so much history and sacredness in that building. I love it. And it was nice going with the class so that Brother Ludlow could explain what everything was in there. It’s an amazing building commemorating two of the greatest events in the history of the eternities. Not a bad place to visit I’d say.







Since then I’ve been hitting up the city as often as possible. I don’t care to see all the sites as much anymore, but just to experience the city that I’ve come to love so much. Thursday afternoon I went to the Tower of David Museum. This was part of a fortress built by King Herod which now has exhibits that tells of the history of Jerusalem. It was really cool to go through all the exhibits and realize how much I have learned this semester.



Last night I went with my Judaism professor Ophir Yarden to a Friday evening service at an Orthdox synagogue. It was a really great experience to see those wonderful Jewish people worshipping and praising God while they ushered in the Sabbath. One thought I had while I was there was that I don’t think I praise God enough. I thank Him for things and I ask Him for things, but I don’t simply praise Him enough. I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot lately in the semester, but it really cultivated last night at the Jewish synagogue. I love my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ with all my heart! They are all-powerful, all-knowing and yet they know and love even me. I know that is true. I have felt of both their power and their love in my life.