The Drive Home and Cool Sites of Joy.

The nine day stay on the sea of Galilee had finally come to an end...But always when we get in the bus it's never just from destination to destination. There is always things to see and do in between. The drive home included a Jewish synagogue, a Conquistador castle, a fish market, and a Christian cemetery.

A happy cactus...

Inside the synagogue..one of the beautiful mosaic floors.

People everywhere here just walk around with big guns. Literally everywhere. Big. Guns. I always feel nervous walking by them cause it points down at your toes. I'm glad people in America can't just walk around with monstrous guns everywhere.

Becky and I imitating and looking around in the conquistador castle.

The Muslim market of vegetables and fish..

A pit stop where in the back in the day camels that were transporting goods to other places would stop to drink and rest.

I found a lemon tree...that looked like limes because they weren't ripe yet. I've never actually picked one off a tree so it was fun to just hold it. And then break it open later on the bus to make it smell nice.

The Christian cemetery. Back in the day there had been 6 missionaries that had come out here (Joseph Spori included). They had all died. But after they had died a British mandate came out saying no more Mormons could come into Israel. We explained to them how we had been coming in the past, but they still wouldn't listen. Later they came out with a rule that you had to have at least 6 people buried in Israel to be able to be considered eligible to come. How ironic that we had exactly that number in this cemetery right before the British mandate came out with the policy. The family's of the people who had died in Israel had struggled with the thought of their deaths. But later we find out about the British mandate and how everything falls into place. The Lord really does prepare a way for us. A divine forethought we all are. Just like how he prepared the tree in the wilderness for the bitter water. Sometimes we really do think we know things in life. But in the end when we give everything we have to God, we realize that He knows far more than we ever will, and knows us far more than we even know ourselves sometimes.

June 3, 2008 8:33am

I just feel overwhelmed with blessings today. I really can’t even grasp in words how cool it is here. If heaven is any part of how it feels to be here; count me in. I can’t believe I get to be around such elite humans. I feel so under where I should be on my level of living when I’m around these people. It’s like they’re all just a bunch of secret treasures. The more I get to know them, the more exciting cool things they do. There are graduated students going off to med-school, people in steel drum bands, a girl who’s worked for facebook, people who have backpacked across Europe, ukulele players, fiddlers, music majors, finance majors, future lawyers, future art teachers, seminary teachers, 5 engaged people, people who go down to south America and perform lung surgeries, people getting double majors, people who speak Lithuanian, people who work for the government and can’t tell us about their job until we get back into the states, people who grew up on a farm, people who grew up with a lot of money, people who scrounged to get here, and people just happy to be alive. There really is a higher way to be living in life. There’s always more you can do. More you can be. More things you can add to yourself to make up who you are. Kelly and I just barely got done talking about how the more we get to know people, the more we just love them and the cooler they become. One time in relief society in Redbug someone said, “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those you love, and those you just don’t know well enough yet.” I love these people. We pick out people we don’t know as well at meals and then make an effort to get to know them that day. It’s so fun to just feel so much love everywhere you go. Everyone is so accepting and is out there for the same reason: To feel the spirit, and have fun. This really is a form of paradise. We’re just barely pulling away right now from the Ein Gev kibbutz where we’ve been staying for the past 9 days on the sea of Galilee. Did you read that right? Did I write that right? The sea of Galilee. The place where so many miracles happened and where our Savior was. The feelings there and the beauty are incomparable. It’s been so fun just to feel so free and relaxed. In the mornings you either have a spiritual new testament class for 3 hours, or you go on a field trip. The second half of the day is just free time and doing whatever you want. Every night they build us a fire and you can go and do as you please. Beach parties every night. We are all in separate little houses all over the beach. There’s swinging lounge chairs and plastic chairs everywhere and little groups of friends everywhere just talking or laughing. We all have burns and tan lines and are falling asleep on the bus right now from staying up late the night before. We smell like fire smoke from last nights s’mores and are happy to be heading home to do our laundry and get back into the groove of life. I’m sad to leave Ein Gev though. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. Its truly an amazing place.