A Peaceful Weekend

September 4, 2008

The last couple days have had many blessings and fun times. The very day after I was complaining about the food, God heard my prayer. As I was walking up to lunch the day after my last blog, I was praying “Lord just give me something fired, maybe some French-fires, and some kind of good chicken, or better yet, I want a juicy burger.” Sure enough, as soon as I walked up the stairs, I looked at the tray of one of those that had just come from getting food, and there was a burger and French fries. I don’t know if any of you had prayed for me, or if God heard my prayer alone, but thank you. I was telling my friend Dan that I would attest to the power of prayer using this as an example for any person who is not a believer. Anyways . . .I had a great lunch, and extra helpings. Since then, I think my attitude has changed towards the food. This has been a blessing.

Yesterday I just got back from an amazing trip to the Mediterranean Sea. A group of us got in a large taxi and traveled the 45 minute trip to Tel Aviv, near the shore of Israel to go swimming. The “Great Sea” was so incredibly war for a larger sea/ ocean. Also, it was more salty than anything I have ever swum in. There were a couple people in my group that live on the east and west coast in the USA, and they said it was also the most salty thing that they have swum in. Also, the water was so incredibly warm. I felt like it was a pool. It was another beautiful 85 degree, sunny day: perfect beach weather. Although, we did have to walk a very long ways during the day. We are all stubborn, cheap, and poor college kids, so we would not take the bus, we continued to walk many of the routes of our journey. Many times people were like, “Oh it’s only a twenty minute walk up this street.” When we’d go thirty minutes, we’d ask another person, and they’d say, “Oh it’s only another fifteen minute walk up this street.” This happened like 4 or 5 times. It was an interesting time, but needless to say, once we got to the beach, we were all ready to just jump in and then lay all day. On the way back to Jerusalem, we took a large taxi the whole way. We found out that it coasted about 3 shekels more to ride the entire way back. This equated for a whopping one dollar more! We could only laugh at our self for how much we had walked only to save 1 dollar. Haha

Today, Dan and I took the liberty to sleep in until 11 o’clock. Neither of us had any classes today, so this worked out perfectly. In the afternoon, we played an ultimate Frisbee game in the Hinnom Valley. For those who don’t know what that is, it is the valley that is referred to as Hell in the Bible. It was crazy to stop in the middle of play and look up from the valley and see the tower of David and the wall right beside us. It definitely was a very memorable thing.

Also, tonight we had our own Shabbat ceremonies. We had our all campus cook out. It was amazing; we had hotdogs, hamburgers, and shish-ca-bobs. Then, afterward, we had a vespers service of teaching and singing. It was a very nice time to relax and praise the Lord. Also, afterward, a couple of us went up to the roof to sing and worship a little longer. It was amazing looking over the city and singing to the Lord.

I’m beginning to find a group of friends that I feel really comfortable with. There are a lot of people here who share common interests. Most are Christian Ed, Bible, Theology, or some type of major like this. We all share a deep passion for truth and for the Lord. I was telling one of the girls the other night that this feels like school in a camp atmosphere. For those who know Miracle Camp, it is these types of people that I am going to class with. IT is actually pretty awesome. Dan, I and a couple other Taylor people have really found a nice group of guys and girls that we hang out with pretty regularly. They are from all over the USA.