Day 4 - Garden of Gethsemane

WOW.  I have always dreamed of coming to this place.  It is hard to believe we are really here.  And on the Sabbath no less.  By the way, Sabbath is on various days here.

Friday = Muslim's Holy Day
Saturday = Jewish Shabot (Sabbath, which goes from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown)
Sunday = Christian Sabbath

Mormons here adopted Saturday as their Sabbath, so today was our first Saturday Sabbath, of Shabat.  Which was kind of cool, because that's when Christ celebrated the Sabbath.

We got dropped off from church 30 minutes before Gethsemane opened, so we ate lunch on a bench just around the corner.  It started to rain, so we stood near the wall.  We had pita and tortilla sandwiches, cashews, and bananas. 

Mom and me just inside Gethsemane.  By the way, do you like the skirt I bought at Shaban's last night?

Some of the olive trees are so old and branches so heavy that they built stone supports.

Joni is probably the only person who has ever been inside the Garden of Gethsemane.  The garden keeper let her inside, so we had to snap a photo.

A thorny tree on the outside corner edge of the garden (Amy's family is standing under it in the photo above).  I wonder if this is the kind of tree they used for Christ's crown of thorns.

This is me plugging my ears and closing my eyes, trying to shut out the crowds of tourists and the horns of cars just outside the garden.  It made it more difficult to imagine what took place here with all those modern distractions.  But Amy had a cool point.  She said in a way these are good reminders that Christ did it for all of those too - every person on tour bus, every driver of those honking cars, everyone.

The church at the Garden of Gethsemane is called The Church of the Agony.  This large stone in the floor is believed to be the one Christ leaned on when he was accomplishing his atoning sacrifice.

The view of Jerusalem's old city wall from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is outside the city.

Tom, who knows so many languages he can't even count them all, is reading out loud in one of them.  The signs by the Christian churches here are often in many languages to accommodate tourists from various countries. 

The English version of what Tom was reading.

 Tom holding tired Jackson after missing his nap on the Sabbath (Saturday).

An olive leave branch from the Garden of Gethsemane. I pressed it in my New Testament by Christ's story in the Garden.  Mom said, "What if it stains your scriptures?"  I replied, "That would be the coolest thing that I could ever stain my scriptures with."  "Oh, I hadn't thought of that."  '

Just for the record, I didn't pick this little branch of leaves.  The garden keepers who run the place have a teenage boy stand at the entrance to the Garden and give each tourist a branch and ask for a donation.  We think they use it for upkeep of the Garden.