Trip: Part 4

Sunday: woke up in Bethlehem (I had to keep reminding myself that I was actually IN Bethlehem! It was crazy.) and spent most of the day in East Jerusalem, in the Old City.  East Jerusalem is in the West Bank, yet Palestinians from Bethlehem have to get special permission from the Israeli government to go to Jerusalem and they're only about 6 miles apart (according to my google search). Here's the outside of our hotel in Bethlehem, the Alexander Hotel.

We drove to Jerusalem and attended the English speaking service at Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.  I thoroughly enjoyed the simple church service and singing with the congregation.  We participated in communion which felt good to me.  I'm not sure if it was simply the fact that I was in Jerusalem, walking where Jesus might have walked, or that in light of all the injustices we'd seen so far, that God is still a loving God who sent his Son to live on this earth and die for our sins.  Maybe it was just that I needed to be grounded to that truth and to be in a church that felt similar to my usual Sunday worship while nothing else around me looked or felt like home.

After church we met up with a tour guide who explained the four sections of the Old City and how few Christians still live there and gave us lots of interesting facts.

The streets in the old city are actually what we would consider stone sidewalks.

 They're not big enough for vehicles to travel and many are lined on both sides with vendors selling daily necessities (meat, spices, fruit, vegetables, clothing, toiletries, etc.) to souvenir shops and olive wood shops and little cafes.  It was wonderful and very, very crowded

Our guide led us to the Church of Holy Sepulchre.

It is said to be built on the sites where Jesus died, was buried in the tomb and where he ascended into Heaven.  The inside of this building, as was the Church of the Nativity, was packed with people from all over the world.  Below is the small building inside the large dome that covers the spot where the cave is that Jesus was buried in.  

Below are the three holes in a wall of rock.  It is believed that the center hole held Jesus' cross the night he died.  It was hard for me to believe the exactness of all these locations and the building was literally crawling with people.  I feel like I saw the place, but I don't think I managed to take in the space.  The whole time I kept thinking, "Did Jesus really die here?  Did Jesus walk here?"

The Dome of the Rock is a Muslim shrine that is right next to the Western Wall.  We weren't there during the hours that Christians are allowed to visit, so we only saw it from a distance.

The Western Wall is a holy Jewish site.  It's a much larger wall than I was expecting and was pretty remarkable.

  

This lone poppy was near the security line we had to go through to get to the wall.

Below is a wide shot of the wall.  On the right is the walkway to the Dome of the Rock.

It is said to be such a holy site that you are to wash your hands before touching it, cover your head and not turn your back when you walk away from it.

Damascus Gate, one of the gates into the Old City

That's my roommate Mimi, she and I made a pretty good pair.

That evening we drove to Ramallah for dinner at the Quaker Friends Meeting House.  We met Kathy Bergen, a former MCCer who now works and lives at the Meeting House.  She served us a wonderful meal and it was great to learn about her work in Ramallah.

Since I documented our hotel room in Amman, here's the room Mimi and I shared in Bethlehem at the Alexander hotel.

And the view out our window to the street below.  That night there was a huge explosion of sound when some team won some soccer game.  There were people out in the street right outside our hotel yelling, screaming, setting off fireworks, spinning doughnuts with their cars for several hours until the police finally showed up to shew them home.  That certainly was interesting to watch when I would have rather been sleeping.