first week

I have almost completed my first week here in Israel and I feel that I have so much to share. Since our field trip to Jerusalem, we have just spent our days on the Moshav exploring and beginning classes. Unfortunately with classes comes homework, I think that the majority of my spare time will be spent in the library reading. I will say that I am very excited about the classes and most of the books we will be reading are very interesting. Sitting in my Land and Bible class today I became more and more excited about reading the Bible and exploring the Land, it continues to come to life to me. I began to become overwhelmed with all that we were learning and would see.

After this first week, Friday is my new favorite day in all ways. Breakfast is always fun: delicious food, great conversations and all heading to class together. My only class for the day is Land and Bible, the teacher is phenomenal, the material is very interesting and we are in the land that the material is being taught about. From here we spend a few hours doing homework and waiting for lunch, little did we know this would be the best meal we had all week. The orient of the week is very different than what I am used to, Friday begins Shabbat, Saturday is their Sunday and they fully celebrate this day. They also have a big dinner and do a ceremony but we did not get to participate in that this week.

We also have chapel on Friday nights, I have greatly missed chapel and it was great to worship again and hear the Word preached. The speaker was the Pastor at the church we will be attending in Jerusalem while we are here. Since being here my perspective on the Bible and worship songs has drastically changed, being in the Land makes everything seem so real. To think that I get to live in the same climate and watch the sunset over the same valley that my Savior and many of the great Patriarchs did is mind boggling and it is such a blessing to be here.

Church was a new experience, the service was done in both Hebrew and English. It was very interesting and hard to follow because it was so chopped up, but none the less it was a great lesson on Luke 4:16-19 and Jesus teaching in the synagogue about how He was the fulfillment to the prophecies. Singing was also a new experience, our teacher had taught us one song in Hebrew but other than that we had no exposure to it. We all sang in Hebrew for the service although there were the words in English, I really enjoyed this!

We spent the rest of our afternoon in the Old City, we mainly just walked around and actually got lost a few times, but I think that there is no better way to become familiar with the city, I am still taken back each time by how different things are in each quarter. That’s it for now, check back soon!

*This is the view from the back of the Moshav looking over a valley at sunset.