Busy Biblical Day (Sept. 2)

There is surprisingly little to do in Nazareth, at least from what we could see. It seems to be a rather modern, industrialized city, which is fine. The place we stayed was lovely and there is plenty to do around Nazareth, just not in Nazareth.

We did visit the Church of the Annunciation, which was built in the late 1960s over the older Byzantine and Crusader-era churches. According to Roman Catholic tradition, the grotto in the bottom of the church is Mary’s childhood home, where the angel came to her with the news that she was bearing the Christ child. Greek Orthodox tradition contradicts this.

Again, I think it’s interesting, but I don’t really think it matters if we know the exact location all of these events took place. I guess I’m not a very good pilgrim, which is too bad since that is basically what we did today.

The church is decorated with depictions of the Madonna and Child, donated by different nations. It was interesting to see how different interpretations there were, ranging from the very traditional to the most abstract.

We were kind of shocked to see the pieces donated by the United States and Canada. They were among the most interpretive. At least in the American one there is an easily visible person, although Mary looks a bit like the Tin Man to me. I’m still not sure I’ve quite figured out the Canadian one. I think that big circle is a halo…

We also visited the Church of St. Joseph, which is basically next door to the Church of the Annunciation, and marks the spot of Joseph’s carpentry shop.

From Nazareth we drove to Tiberias for a quick stop at the Sea of Galilee. The beach was covered with razor wire, like most things in Israel. I don’t know how covering a beach with sharp stuff is going to protect anybody from anything, but it did dissuade us from swimming…

Rachel was still a bit feverish but was well enough to run around and splash in the puddles created by a statue/fountain thing that we found. She didn’t run around for long before she was completely tired out, though, and wanted nothing but to be held for the rest of the day.

Patrick tried to slowly walk into the sea but he slipped and landed with a plop in knee-deep water. At least he landed on his feet. A little school of fish surrounded him and started pulling on his leg hairs.

Tiberias was a difficult city to navigate. It wasn’t very well marked and once you were off the freeway it was kind of like “Welcome to Tiberias! Good luck!” We followed a UPS guy around for a while and he ended up making a stop right by the visitor/information center, which was helpful because it meant we could grab a map. Even then we were kind of hopeless; we got lost getting out of Tiberias, too.

Navigating the main roads in Israel is much easier, though, and we find out about things we wouldn’t have known about if we hadn’t been driving. On our way to Tabgha we saw a tourist sign announcing that the “Jesus Boat” would be on our next right. So we pulled of in Ginosar to investigate and ended up being glad that we did. It was a really neat thing to see.

It dates back to the time of Christ and is the oldest boat ever found in freshwater. We went on a guided tour, since there isn’t any other kind, and had a sweet old man as our guide. He was pretty hilarious; he kept asking questions and then answering them without waiting for us to respond. It sounded more like he was muttering to himself than like he was giving a tour. Still, we learned a lot.

The first thing I noticed when we walked in the room was the stench.

“Boy, it smells in here!” I whispered to Andrew.

I was almost ready to pass out it was so overwhelming. He agreed that it smelled a bit funny but mostly blamed my pregnancy nose.

Come to find out, it had to sit in a boiling pool of wax and chemicals for a decade before it was ready to see dry land. That explained the smell much better than my pregnancy nose.

We visited the museum there as well, but it was pretty lame, so we quickly moved on to Tabgha.

Tabgha is where the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes—a church built over a stone where tradition holds the actual multiplication took place—is located.

It is also where Jesus appeared to his disciples again, his third appearance after his resurrection. The Church of the Primacy of Peter supposedly marks this exact location, though we didn’t visit that church.

We were getting pretty hungry by this time in the day and had plans to eat our lunch at the Church of Multiplication, but there didn’t seem to be any good spots for picnicking so we decided to press on until we got to the Mount of the Beatitudes.

We decided to stop at Capernaum on our way there so that we’d be sure to be very hungry when we actually got around to eating.

Capernaum is most famous for being the hometown of a few of the apostles (Andrew and Matthew), perhaps most notably Peter. It’s also where Jesus began his ministry. There is an excavation site that is believed to be Peter’s actual house. Rachel was very interested to know why Peter lived in a hole. We tried explaining to her that mostly all that is left of his house was the foundation and that once upon a time it wasn’t that deep underground. I’m not sure how much of that she understood; she was quite puzzled about it all afternoon.

The synagogue at Capernaum is one of the oldest in the world and is likely where Jesus delivered some of his sermons, like the one found in John 6.

From Capernaum we continued on to the Mount of the Beatitudes. The church was closed when we got there so we decided to just have lunch on some rocks on the hillside, under some trees. Rachel napped in the car while we ate and when she woke up I fed her and Andrew sneaked off to read the Sermon on the Mount while overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

While I was feeding Rachel I heard a chirping sound and looked over my shoulder only to find myself face to face not with a bird, as I was expecting, but with a cute, green chameleon. It was fun to watch him walk around for a bit; chameleons have really weird feet.

We took a few pictures but Rachel wasn’t feeling very well still and didn’t cooperate very well. When Andrew asked her to smile she could barely lift her head off my shoulder before collapsing again.

From there we headed to Mount Tabor, also know as the Mount of Transfiguration. It was quite the drive, up dozens of switchbacks on a road wide enough for only one lane of traffic, to the Church of Transfiguration, but it sure was beautiful.

Neocats singing in the Church of Transfiguration at Mt. Tabor

Rachel was a little more alert because we gave her another dose of medicine at the Mount of Beatitudes, so her fever had gone back down and her headache had subsided. Poor thing kept telling us that everything was “too bright,” and that everything on her body hurt. Her head hurt, her arms hurt, her fingers hurt, her knees hurt, her back hurt, even her hair hurt (apparently). A simple fever and pain reducer took care of all of that.

We didn’t stay long because I wanted to get back to the apartment to let poor, little Rachel rest. No one really argued about leaving, either; we’d all seen our fill of churches and ruins.

When we pulled up at the apartment we noticed that Andrew had just missed squishing yet another chameleon. Joseph declared this day “The Day of Chameleons,” and with good reason—I don’t think I’ve ever come across a wild chameleon in my life and we’d just come across two in the same day.

When I tried to take a turn holding him, he wouldn’t walk onto my arm. Patrick’s backpack was much more interesting.

Andrew’s probably happy about that because he gets a little squeamish around animals like snakes and fish and lizards and bees and…I’ll stop before I embarrass him. He was just as happy to not have to touch as he was that he didn’t run it over.

A few weeks ago when we were walking to church we came across a squished lizard in the middle of the road. It was all bloated and oozing bodily fluids. Andrew just about lost his breakfast.

I had completely forgotten about this on Saturday when I walked into the women’s bathroom at the Jerusalem Center and found a squished, dried lizard, no bigger than my little finger. I picked it up in a tissue to show to Andrew, thinking (for some odd reason) that he would think it was neat or cute or I don’t know what. Instead of being interested in it, though, he kind of surprised me by saying,

“Oh, gross! Get rid of it! You know how I feel about squished lizards!”

“I do?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “Remember when…”

And then he reminded me about how poorly he reacted to seeing the dead lizard in the middle of the road. Oops. I forgot. Dead lizards are worse than live lizards, apparently because Andrew was very happy that he didn’t squish this one.

The line, “You know how I feel about squished lizards!” is almost as good as the time I cried to Andrew in a pregnancy-fit, “You don’t even have a cervix!” (Long story short, he was making fun of me for gasping and jumping after a very hard punch from Miriam, who seems to aim rather low, unlike Rachel who was more of a rib-baby).

When we were all rested from our whirlwind New Testament tour, we went out souvenir shopping for the last time. Things were a lot cheaper in Nazareth than in other places.

Andrew and I went in one shop and started bartering with the owner over a nativity piece. He kept going down in price, but not low enough for us. Then Patrick ran over and said that the guy next door said that he’d give us anything in the store for 50% off. The guy we had been haggling with quickly matched that deal, so we bought our things from him and headed over to Patrick’s store to wait.

While we were standing there, Andrew looked up to the very top of the shelf where he saw the bust of a man.

“Does that look like Joseph Smith to you?” he asked me, pointing to the bust.

“You know, it kind of does,” I told him.

“I don’t know,” he said, “It’s probably just Beethoven or something.”

It still looked like Joseph Smith to me, so I asked the owner, Kameel.

“Who is that a carving of?”

“That,” he said, reaching up and pulling it down for us to have a better look and then pronouncing every syllable very carefully, “Is Joseph Smith.”

“No way!” Andrew and I said at once, laughing.

“Did I say it wrong?” Kameel asked, worried.

“No, you said it right…it’s just…we’re Mormons.”

“You are?!” he asked, “I haven’t seen any Mormons in a while. Last year I had one come to my store…from Jordan, studying Arabic with BYU. They asked me to make this statue, so I did, and a few extras.”

It was too funny. Who’d have thought we’d find a Joseph Smith bust at a random shop in Israel. There were three left in his store, so we all bought one…kind of an impulse buy, but we’d have regretted it if we didn’t. Andrew’s really excited to put it in his office one day.

I’m excited for the day that Andrew has an office…one day…

Jerusalem to Nazareth (Sept. 1)

We picked up our rental car early in the morning and packed up to head to Nazareth. Rachel behaved horrendously all morning. I was trying to get things ready to go and she was clinging to me and crying; when we got in the car she continued fussing and screaming whenever anyone so much as looked at her.

Eventually she fell into a fitful sleep. At least she was quiet.

Andrew planned a bit of a biblical tour for us on our way to Nazareth. Our first stop on our way, which was kind of out of our way, was Caesarea.

I navigated on the way there and only got us lost a couple of times. Driving in Israel isn’t too bad, really…not that I drive, but the traffic really isn’t that bad and most of the signs are in English as well as Hebrew and Arabic. Sometimes they are only in Hebrew, other times only in Hebrew and Arabic, but most of the important routes are marked in English and tourist destinations are very easy to find.

The minute I pulled Rachel from the car seat, I knew why she had been grumpy all morning. She had developed a high fever in the few hours we were driving and was absolutely miserable.

We decided to visit Caesarea anyway since they have water and restrooms, which our car didn’t.

Multimedia presentations seem to be the cool thing to do in Israel right now. Many tourist destinations have them; they really aren’t that neat or informative, although it is interesting to get the Jewish take on world history. We sat through the first half of the presentation, enjoying the air conditioning and cuddling Rachel, and then were taken up to the Artnova Gallery for the second half. When that was finished we had to walk through the art gallery to get to the exit.

The bathrooms were in the hall, so we stopped to use them.

I set Rachel down for a few minutes in a window sill since I was getting tired of carrying her. She didn’t want anyone else to carry her, so I was stuck with her…not that I mind, she’s just heavy. I was leaning against the sill, still cuddling her, when she started burping.

“Mommy! *Burp!* My tummy’s *burp* poppin’ *burp*!”

And then she threw up, drenching her shirt and skirt and splattering my shirt and pants as well. Luckily she missed the art.

I rushed her off to the bathroom and hollered for Andrew to help me. No one was around so he just came right on in and together we stood in the women’s bathroom in a deserted art gallery in Caesarea.

She threw up a second time in the sink, and so we rinsed it all down the drain, stripped off her clothes and washed those out in the sink as well.

We didn’t want to leave since we had already paid the entrance fee, so we carried her around for a bit wearing nothing but her underwear. We draped her wet t-shirt over her back so that she wouldn’t burn. It didn’t take long for us to realize that all of us staying was a ridiculous idea.

Andrew took her back to the car and I continued through the park with Patrick and Joseph. I’m not sure who got the better end of the deal. Patrick was Mr. Humbug and woudn’t go see any of the Roman ruins. He said that seeing Roman ruins in Israel was lame and that if he had wanted to see Roman ruins he would have gone to Rome, which is on his list of places to visit, anyway. He doesn’t want to spoil any surprises Rome might hold and thought that spending money to get into Caesarea was a waste of money. He was such a grump that I could hardly stand to look at him; he scowled the whole time we were there.

Joseph, on the other hand, wanted to see everything. I had to keep reminding him that Rachel was sick and I needed to get back to her, we all needed to get back to her, so that we could get to Nazareth and get her taken care of.

I felt like the biggest nag, dragging one “child” through the park and trying to reign the other in so that we could make it to the exit.

We walked through the Roman baths (well, Joseph and I did; Patrick wouldn’t set foot in them), saw the Hippodrome, and visited the Temple Dais, as well as the hall where Paul appealed to Caesar.

Admittedly, it was a bit of a whirlwind tour and I would have liked to stay longer myself…but it just wasn’t practical given the circumstances. It was refreshing to be by the sea, but I think we all left with sour attitudes, anyway.

It took me so long to herd those boys to the exit that Andrew and Rachel came back from the car to look for us. Patrick grumbled his way back to the car, Joseph almost turned to a pillar of salt he was longing to go back so badly, and I told Andrew I was ready to pull my hair out. Andrew just cranked the music up in the car and we spent a while sitting in silence until the mood dispelled.

At least Andrew and Rachel were happy.

Rachel fell asleep minutes after we took off on our way to Megiddo, which is where John said the nations will assemble for the battle of Armageddon. The word Armageddon is actually derived from the name Megiddo, or vice versa.

We decided not to actually enter the park since all Rachel wanted to do was cuddle, but we did use the restrooms and randomly ran into Brother Emmet and the other BYU-Jerusalem Center professors who were also out touring before the students arrived. We also took a few snapshots from the top of the hill and picked some pomegranates…I’m not sure we were supposed to do that. I wasn’t exactly involved, though, since I was in the car cuddling Rachel.

Fifteen minutes later and we found ourselves in Nazareth. We met up with Marie Jean, who we thought would be a nice, grandmotherly nun since she works at the Sisters of Nazareth Convent and her name is Marie Jean, which sounded kind of nun-ish to us. She’s not, though, but that’s okay because she also had a different idea about how we would be.

Marie Jean rented us her husband’s dead grandmother’s apartment, without permission--and really with express disproval—from his relatives, who happened to live in the apartments in the next few floors above our apartment.

The convent wants to start renting it out on a regular basis. The family doesn’t want this to happen, so we were given a cover story.

Marie Jean told her husband’s uncle that she visited us in America when we had our first baby and now we were visiting Israel and needed a place to stay. Turn about is fair play, after all, and Arabs are all about wusta.

The only problem was that she visited America in 1996. I hadn’t even met Andrew then. I was eleven years old and living in Canada still. He was only twelve. Somehow, though, we managed to have a baby in 1996 so that she could visit us and our new baby.

We decided to tweak the story so that Marie Jean visited my older sister to help her with her baby. That story really is believable because I did have a sister who was bearing children then and have a 12-year-old niece. I don’t think anyone really would have believed that Andrew and I were the parents of a 12-year-old. Besides, family is family, connections are connections, wusta is wusta. It doesn’t matter how remotely related you are or how many degrees of separation there are.

As far as her relatives were concerned, we were in. The uncle, who is the most opposed to using the apartment as a hostel of sorts, only ever smiled at us and went on his way. Another part of our cover story was that we didn’t speak a lick of Arabic; and he didn’t speak a lick of English so it worked out.

The apartment was wonderful. Mary Jean had stocked the fridge and pantry with fresh fruit and vegetables, cookies, cereal, milk, juice, bread, cheese, meat, and almost everything else imaginable. She borrowed a crib for Rachel to sleep in and set up hide-a-beds for Patrick and Joseph in the living room.

I sent Andrew and Patrick out to find a pharmacy soon after we arrived and just sat on the couch holding poor little Rachel. The pharmacy must have been really close to the house because they came back after what seemed like only a few minutes bearing medicine and, as an added bonus, a slushie (to help lower her fever and replenish her fluids, Andrew said). Rachel willingly took her medicine, drank about half a slushie, and then climbed off my lap and wandered into the bedroom.

“I want sleep mommy-daddy’s bed,” she said and then noticed there was a crib. “Ooh, my twib. I want sleep my twib.”

I got her set for a nap and lifted her into the crib where she slept and slept and slept the afternoon away.

The boys went back to the slushie place to take pictures of the car on the roof and get some slushies for everyone else. Mango-strawberry slushies. Best ever.

Garden Tomb, West Bank, Yad Vashem –Jerusalem, day 5 (Aug. 31)

The Garden Tomb was by far my favorite place in Jerusalem; there is a sacred, peaceful feeling in the garden. Even though it was full of tourists when we visited it in the morning, everyone was quiet and respectful, and it was just beautiful. Unfortunately we didn’t spend very much time there because it was so crowded, but it was still nice.

It is very near the bus stop that we used to get to Bethlehem. In fact, the bus stop is located right under Skull Hill, so it was easy to find after we’d walked to the lookout point in the garden and saw it.

Bus number 124 drops you off at the checkpoint, so although my friend Brooke recommended taking bus 21 (which would take you around the checkpoint), Andrew insisted we take # 124, just so that we could have the experience.

The bus ride was quick and luckily we didn’t have a hard time at the checkpoint, either. The minute we’re identified as Americans we’re waved through pretty much anything.

The wall though, is awful. It’s a concrete scar zigzagging across the landscape. It seems to promote fear and hatred more than safety and peace.

The Israeli side is quite pristine; the Palestinian side, however, is covered in graffiti and smeared with human defecation.

The religions listed on this hand are Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, in case you can’t make it out. And sorry about the swear word…the people are angry; I can hardly blame them. I wouldn’t want to be cut off from my homeland and livelihood and be forced to live on a little strip of land behind a huge wall with snipers looking down on me all the time like I’m some kind of criminal just for being alive.

We hired a cab from the wall and he drove us to all the touristy sites before depositing us back at the wall. He didn’t want to drive us to just one place and we couldn’t convince him to just drop us downtown, but it ended up being fine. We made friends with him and he ended up shooing all the other taxi drivers trying to get us to go other places away, telling them all about us, what we were doing, that we’re Mormons and don’t drink tea or coffee or alcohol, that we don’t smoke, and that Andrew’s been studying Arabic for years.

It was nice to have someone else waving away the cab drivers for us!

Our cab driver took us to the Shepherd’s Hill, which is supposedly where the angel came to the shepherds to tell them of the baby Jesus. There’s a chapel marking the spot, but I’m not sure how exact the location is.

It was fun to look out over the hills, though, and imagine what it would have been like to be a shepherd there on that holy night. We even saw a shepherd herding his sheep and goats on the hillside.

We also visited the Milk Grotto, where supposedly a drop of Mary’s milk fell while she was nursing baby Jesus. There are a lot of traditions surrounding this event—one that Jesus caught the drop of milk and that is what gave him his power, and another that the milk turned the stone white and that mixing it with your drinking water will make your breast milk stronger. There are probably other tales.

Next we went to Manger Square and visited the Church of the Manger. It is built over the spot where tradition holds the baby Jesus was born; the church is one of the oldest churches in the world and has written records dating back to around 100 AD marking it as “the place,” so it likely is.

Although I doubt the star on the floor marking the exact place the Savior was born is really the exact spot. I tried to imagine marking the exact “spot” Rachel was born and couldn’t figure out anyway to really do that.

We also visited an olive wood shop that sold overpriced carvings. We didn’t buy anything there, but Rachel and I did go up onto the roof to use a doorless bathroom guarded by a dog.

Our taxi driver wanted to take us to visit some monasteries as well, but we had other things on our itinerary so he dropped us back off at the wall. We kind of got stuck going through the checkpoint because we couldn’t figure out how to get past the turnstiles. None of them would turn.

Finally a Palestinian man who was at the checkpoint with us yelled for us to come to a different turnstile than the one we had been standing at. We had been periodically checking them all. There are red and green lights above them and you can only go through if the light is green. They were all red…until now.

“This one is working!” he yelled, “Come quickly!”

So we ran over there and made it back to the Israeli side after being “stuck” in Palestine for about 20 minutes.

We caught bus 124 back into Jerusalem and got dropped off at Damascus Gate around 1:30, whereupon Rachel announced she had to go to the bathroom and was very, very hungry. And thirsty.

I asked her if she could hold her business for a half hour until the Garden Tomb opened again so that we could use a clean restroom. She said she could, so we found another falafel place, bought some lunch, and went to eat outside the gates to the Garden Tomb.

When it opened we were just finishing up our lunch. Two or three other people arrived and went inside before we did. It was perfect; I highly recommend showing up right when the gates open. If the garden was peaceful before, now it was absolutely tranquil. We were able to take some better pictures by the tomb and spend some time pondering and feeling the spirit.

Opening the door to the tomb and finding it empty inside was very powerful, much more powerful than being herded in and out of the tomb in a line of tourists. I’m so grateful for the atonement of the Savior, for the gift of resurrection, and for the hope of eternal life.

In light of my friend Ryan’s death, I almost want to end this post here because knowing that my family has been sealed together, and that Kate and Ryan were sealed together as a family, gives me such comfort. The Savior made it possible for us all to conquer death; Ryan is not here, but he will be reunited with his little family again for all of eternity. And that’s a wonderful, beautiful thing.

We did do more in Jerusalem on this day, so I suppose I will carry on. Andrew wanted to visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. Andrew has relatives who died at Auschwitz (and Nazi relatives who worked at Auschwitz…) and he did a Holocaust remembrance ceremony for his Eagle Scout project. He’s wanted to visit Yad Vashem for years, so we couldn’t not go.

Unfortunately, children under the age of 10 aren’t allowed in the museum and we didn’t find out that little detail until we got there; guidebooks need to start mentioning those kinds of things. We split up and Andrew watched Rachel while I went through with Patrick and Joseph; then Patrick and I watched Rachel while Andrew went through and Joseph continued on.

Patrick and I made it back to Andrew with three minutes to spare before they locked the doors and didn’t let any visitors in. He had to book it to get inside, but he made it.

It’s a beautiful museum with some very poignant displays. At one point there was a pit full of scorched shoes; glass covered the shoes and you could walk over them to get to the next part of the exhibit. It was amazing to see how many shoes there were.

I also liked all the interviews they did with concentration camp survivors and all the personal stories they had up on the wall.

I’ll admit to being a bit of a World War II fan, myself, and for years my favorite book as a child was Number the Stars. Fan is not really the word I’m going for since I think the Holocaust was a terrible thing and that war, in general, is horrible…I suppose it’s hatred that draws me to the subject. I don’t understand how one group of people can collectively hate another group of people so intensely. Hate is a difficult emotion for me to understand at all. I understand fear and anger and frustration, and I suppose all those things fuel hatred, but I still don’t get it.

Walking through the museum was confusing for me, as well. Words like “emancipation” and “freedom” and “rights” were being thrown around, telling of the Jews struggle to gain such things.

I realize that the Holocaust was much worse than what is happening to Palestinians in Israel. However, as the museum itself pointed out, the Holocaust started by defining people as “others,” by putting those “others” behind walls, and then slowly taking their rights and livelihood away until they are no longer thought of as citizens, or even as people. I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Who is building walls now? Who is promoting fear and hatred of ‘the other’ now?”

At the same time I admire the strength and bravery of the Jewish people for enduring such harsh treatment for so long; I think they deserve a place to worship freely and to rebuild their traditions and culture. I just don’t think they should trample on the rights of other people to do so.

Have I mentioned recently...

...that I love Andrew? Because I do. I'm so lucky to be married to such a wonderful person. Andrew is my favorite.

...that I love being a mom? Because I do. It's hard, that's true, but it's the greatest thing I've ever done and Rachel is such a joy to have in our home. I love her so much! I already love baby Miriam, too, and can't wait to meet her.

...that I love my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and in-laws and grandparents and aunts and uncles? Because I do. My family is amazing.

...that I love the gospel? Because I do. I love the Plan of Happiness and am grateful that the Savior lived and died for me and atoned for my sins so that I can return to live with Heavenly Father again. I am so thankful for temples and sealing power so that our family can be together forever.

...that life is fragile? Because it is.

I just wanted to make sure that I said that recently.

My friend Ryan, who I went to high school with, died yesterday in a car crash, on the scene. His wife, Katie, who I supervised in Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU, is in the hospital, unconscious, with serious injuries. Their new baby, Cora, is fine. Ryan's parents are on their way to pick up baby Cora; Katie's parents are in the hospital with her.

This is my worst nightmare. I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

Andrew saw me writing this and asked if it was in case I died. And it kind of is. Because if anything like this ever does happen to our family, I want my children and husband and extended family to know that I love them. But it's kind of also because I'm alive, too. Because sometimes it's just important to tell people that you love them.