Tag: Travel

Life is a journey.

This tour of Israel is a microcosm of that journey. There is a beginning, an end and a time in between.

It is in the in-between time one hopes for personal transformation.This evening we entered the in-between time when Arie Bar-David taught us for the first time on this tour.

The day was a relaxing one, as we waited for the rest of the members of our tour to arrive. We visited a local mall, which was similar to malls in the United States except everything was in Hebrew, the McDonald’s was kosher and security guards check your trunk for bombs as you enter the parking garage and your purse as you walk through the security scanners. Continue reading “Israel Tour Journal: Day 3”

We arrived safely in Tel Aviv, and our friend and tour leader, Ji Yun, picked us up at the airport.

Israel is about the size of New Jersey, so it doesn’t take long to get around. It took about twenty minutes to get from Tel Aviv to Yad Hashmona, the Christian moshav where we are staying.

There was no time for sleeping, desperate though we were for it, because we wanted to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the place Christians most want to see when they come to Israel; for us it was the most disappointing. Ji had warned us.

The church sits on what many believe is the site of Jesus’ crucifixion. That spot is under the dome you see in the picture. The church also includes the stone on which Jesus was supposedly laid when He was taken off the cross, the supposed tomb from which He was resurrected, and a chapel where Constantine’s mother, Helena, supposedly discovered the True Cross. Continue reading “Israel Tour Journal: Day 2”

Today we are making our journey from our home to Israel.

The journey consists of 12 hours of flying, 18 hours total travel time with the layover and travel to and from airports.

I’m actually writing this while on the plane somewhere over Europe, watching the time on the destination monitor in the plane move at an unbearably slow pace.

I supposed there is something I should get out on the table before we go any further on this journey together: I don’t travel well.

That sounds silly, I know; I love to travel but I don’t like the getting-there part of it. Continue reading “Israel Tour Journal: Day 1”