I felt so blessed that we got to enter this "other garden" of Gethsemane. No tourists or anyone else was in there, but Tom told us the garden keepers like the BYU Jerusalem students so they'll sometimes let them in, and we happened to run into a group of BYU kids right then, and asked if they wanted to get in too. They had arrived in the country after us, had seen less than us, and didn't even know what it was, but they were game. So the nice man let us in. I liked it so much better because it wasn't crowded with tourists and noise.
This was soooo cool. Tom read to us from his Hebrew Old Testament from the book of Isaiah prophecies about Christ and his Atonement.
Tom's Hebrew Old Testament.
Sitting enjoying the peace of the other Garden of Gethsemane.
The group of BYU Jerusalem kids who are enjoying their first week of their four month semester in Israel. I wish I would have asked them to turn around and pose for the camera. I was VERY impressed with this new group of students at fast and testimony meeting today. WOW. Spiritually mature, grounded, Saturday's warrior youth.
A centipede, I think... I asked Joni how many legs she thinks it had. "A hundred? A thousand?" I asked. Joni said, "29." I'm kinda glad we don't have these in Syracuse, Utah. And if we do, don't anybody tell me, okay?
An interesting little detour inside the second garden that Amy showed us. This is a gated hole that goes underground under the wall of the garden. If you look closely you'll see ancient bones of people. I understand that after they let time pass so a dead person's body decomposed, they would gather the bones and move them to a farther back place in the tomb.
I do understand that a type of centepede does live here in Utah. They are showing them off at the Zoo right now.
ReplyDeleteI was here with Daniel Rona, my guide. He is Jewish/American. Born in Jerusalem and lives both there and in SLC. He told us that when Elder Hunter (later President Hunter) was there with his tour, that he interrupted Daniel's presentation to tell them that he had just seen the Savior walking down the path just above us there in that park (the "other Gethsemane", as you called it)! Daniel used to be the Branch President of the Jerusalem Branch and was later in the Galilee District Presidency. He has been a guide there for over forty years. He was the guide for the Brethren (President Kimball, President Monson, Elder Hunter and BYU President Jeffrey R. Holland and others) during the years that they were arranging to get the Jerusalem Center approved by the Knesset in Jerusalem. He told us a great story of President Kimball going and spending two hours by himself at Mount Tabor and later that day telling the youth in Galilee that he had just been to the Mount of Transfiguration....a surprise revelation to everyone as that site is one of two that the scholars are debating!!!
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