Indiana Custer, Part III

Final installment: There were so many sites we saw during our two weeks of class and travel that I cannot possibly cover them all. So, I'll touch on some of the more meaningful ones that stuck out in my memory. 

Of course, there was the group baptism. 14 people in our group had never been baptized before or only as infants and wanted to declare their dedication to Christ. Since we were near the Jordan River, it seemed perfect to do it there. The second picture here is on a cliff near Nazareth overlooking the Jezreel Valley. What was cool there was when our tour guide went through story after story that took place there. "Over to the left is where Deborah and Barak assembled the Israelites to fight Sisera ... the river flooded and washed out the valley ... and there's En-Dor where Saul snuck around that hill in disguise ... Gideon encircled the Midianites' camp with merely 300 men ... Jesus raised a young man back to life as he was being carried to his funeral ...."

Across the Sea of Galilee here you see the sun setting behind the Cliffs of Arbel. Those cliffs contain a ton of caves where some rebels hid out during the Jewish Revolt in the 1st century. We got to climb down the steep side which was enormously fun! Some of the caves were still black from where the Romans had smoked out the rebels. The third picture here contains older ruins from the time of King Ahab (bad king but smart builder). It's the city of Hazor up in northern Galilee.

Speaking of Jewish rebels, they really did leave remnants everywhere. Here we're at Herodian, one of Herod the Great's fortresses that he could withdraw to when his enemies got too close. (Later, the revolters dug tunnels to hide in as well.) The next picture is another fortress way off in the distance: Masada, quite famous, too for what the Jewish rebels did there.

Masada is located in the Dead Sea Valley which is where these next three pictures were taken. That was a beautiful day! The view was tremendous (as you can see) even though it was about 108 degrees! We stopped at Qumran, which is the second picture, and could see from afar one of the caves in which most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They weren't going to take us swimming, but we begged and begged to float around for a little bit, and they finally let us. It was such a unique experience because it really is hard to stand; you have to float. And if you flip over onto your stomach, it's nearly impossible to flip back. I think in this picture we have rocks on our bellies, and we're still not sinking. 

Back in Jerusalem! This is a shot from a walk we did along the walls of the Old City. You can see Damascus Gate which enters into the Moslem Quarter, and on Saturdays, the gate is turned into a marketplace. Finally, I watched the sun set over Jerusalem almost every night. It was easily one of the highlights of my day.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and caring! :-)