Jesus Trail - Day One

The Jesus Trail. Day one, the beginning...

Today we start our journey on the Jesus Trail. I am nervous. I am filled with anticipation. I am nervous!! What will this day bring?

It it hot outside, but the cool breeze is pleasant. As we gather in the foyer of Fauzi Azar and leave together for the giant stairway that marks the start of our journey I can not help but feel God in our midst.

I tend to be a little bit of a slow walker, and I like to think that it is because it takes me a while to process my surroundings. Nature and I have always "clicked" and it is where I experiance God's voice the clearest. The breeze along the grass, whispered encouragement to the whole group as we walked up and down the rocky and hilly terrain. We saw all sorts of wildlife including camels, tortises, storks, and butterflies and bugs. It was beautiful!

Today we walk from the guest house Fauzi Azar to Cana. Today we walked 20 km. We walked to an amazing site at Sepphoris where there were many mosaics. These ancient mosaics were largely intact and are some of the best kept mosaics of their time. The ruins of the city of Sephoris were amazing. This was a highlight for me because I had seen some of the mosaics in textbooks and being able to see the original made the images come alive for me!

The site at sepphoris is exceptional because it has had a diverse and historical influence by many peoples including Assyrian, Hellenistic, Judean, Babylonian, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Crusader, Arabic and Ottoman. It is said that the Virgin Marys parents (Anna and Joachim) lived in this city. Some notable building are two early Christian churches, a crusader fortress  and upwards of forty different mosaics. I was stunning.

After viewing the site at Sepphoris we had lunch and walked the second half of our journey towards Cana. As we neared Cana we sat down and looked at the cityscape as we discussed our devotional for the day. The topic was on healing. Mosaics are made up of many broken stones in many different colours and all those stones create a beautiful image even though they are just broken rocks! People are the similar because even though sometimes we are broken or something breaks us, God helps rebuild us into marvelous mosaics with his healing power.

I will leave this blog with a quick prayer for the group and for our audience...

Dear God,
Give us strength today for the brokeness we feel.
Use your healing power to free us from the bondage of evil.
Rebuild our spirits and renew our souls.
Make us into marvelous mosaics of your love and grace.
Amen. 

Emily Enns

Golan Heights to the Galilee

We followed the familiar route on foot out of the narrow streets of the old city of Nazareth this morning to be greeted in the newer part of the city by a smaller bus than we had travelled in for the past couple of days.  Our new bus (with the same faithful driver) made conversations even easier as we moved from site to site on another full day.

We headed north where our first stop was the ancient city of Dan, where we sat at the city gates like the rulers of old and heard the stories from Genesis and 1 Kings about that ancient city (parts of it from ~2,000 BCE) in a lush and fertile land.

Visiting Caesarea Philippi was a striking experience, as we wandered through places of worship for Pan and other Greek gods, and remembered that it was near this city that Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?"  What are the tempting options before us today, the ones that offer power and abundance, as we hear that voice that calls us to speak words of faith?

The theme of declaring who we follow continued later in the day when we visited a spot on the Jordan River where busloads of people from around the world come to get baptized.  Before arriving there, we had a group devotional on the theme of baptism at the spot where it is remembered that Jesus healed a man of a legion of demons and sent a herd of pigs into the sea.  And after seeing the huge scene with long lines of people in white robes being baptized in various ways, we spent part of our drive back talking about the theme even more.  What did this all mean?

There were other fascinating parts of the day, like eating lunch in a Druze village, and just starting to dip our toes into some current political context as we visited the Golan Heights, sat in spots where we looked down into Lebanon and Syria, and crawled through an old bunker.

The days are full, but we come to the end of them with much to talk about, much to write in our journals, and far too much to even be able to fully articulate.  Tomorrow we start hiking the Jesus Trail, and I look forward to a spacious place in which we can continue to reflect on what we have already seen and heard in such a short time.

~Alissa (Faith Partner)

Hello everyone,

Today is our 5th day here in Israel but it feels like we've been here much longer, well for me anyways. The trip has been awesome so far and just keeps getting better. I will be sharing with you all what we did today.

First we started out by going down to Ginosar by the Sea of Galilee. There we watched a short video in Jesus Boat Museum, then we walked down to the docks and went for a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee. We stopped in the middle of the sea and Linford started sharing scriptures about the places around the Galilee with us and the significance of these locations. He also shared an interesting topic about why Jesus chose fishermen to follow him. After the boat ride, we got back on the bus and drove up to Mount of Beatitudes where we visited a church. We spent some time there and took some pictures. When we were done, we visited another church close by. Here we walked down to the beach of the Galilee and Linford began to share more scriptures with us about the disciples and Peter. After when we were finished there, Linford led us up a little hill in the Mount of Beatitudes where we eventually came to a place where they think is the place Jesus gave the sermon on the mount. We had devotion there and talked about the kingdom/empire of God vs. kingdom/empire of the world. It was a very interesting topic and good to hear what everyone had to say. (FYI as I'm writing this we just felt a little earthquake...nothing major....we are all fine.) Anyways, our last location we visited was Capernaum. This is where Jesus did most of his ministry and also where Peter's mother-in-law lived. We got to see the ruins there and had Linford give us biblical history of this place. This was are last stop of the day, we returned back to the Fauzi Azar Inn after our visit.

So far our trip has been very educational and I believe many of us are learning so much. The bible feels like it's becoming more alive!

- Andrew Vang

Caesarea and Mount Carmel

It started out foggy this morning, but within an hour or so, it was clear and hot.  A perfect day for heading by bus to the ancient city site of Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea.  Picture a huge Roman amphitheatre, facing out to the blue Mediterranean...that's where we sat while Lindford Stutzman explained about Paul's journey to Caesarea.  It was here that Paul was imprisoned, waiting for an appeal to Rome.  We saw the stone outline of the prison where he was kept, and how close it was to the hippodrome where they had chariot races.  He would probably have been listening to the crowds while he sat for months and months waiting.  Then we saw the port, when he left on the boat to Rome, this would have been the last thing he saw of Israel. We went down the coast a bit and saw the remains of a huge aqueduct; bringing fresh water from the hills to the city.  This whole city was built by King Herod.  Pretty splashy place!

And that was just the first half of the morning.  We all could have spent the whole day there, but we tore ourselves away and headed by bus to Mount Carmel, the place where Elijah battled against the prophets of Baal.  It was dramatic seeing the Jezreel Valley spread out below us.  And it came complete with a giant airstrip and Israeli fighter jets taking off and landing.  When we get home, you will see lots of pictures from this day!

The afternoon was fun and relaxing, swimming at some hot springs in a national park.  Everyone is doing great, we are getting to know each other as a group, and we are enjoying each other's company.  Lindford comments on how engaged our participants are, and all the good questions they come up with.  It's not unusual on a bus ride or as we walk from place to place to hear conversations about the bible going on with great intensity!

We love staying in the Fauzi Azar Inn, you can google it, a fabulous little oasis in Nazareth, and the food here is spectacular!  This is Carol Penner writing, I am one of the faith partners.

Left:  The disciples at the top of Mt. Carmel

Bottom: The Aqua-ducts. 

Hey everyone!

We are now on our second day in and thoroughly enjoying our time! Today we started the day with a delicious breakfast of fresh vegetables and fruits, pita, hummus, cheese, eggs and Arabic coffee! The food has been one of the great highlights so far!

After our awesome breakfast we had the privilege of having Linford lead us around Nazareth village. Nazareth village was founded by Christians about 10 years ago to provide a reconstruction of what type of life Jesus likely lived. The area is built on a hill and it includes a reconstruction of a typical 1st century house, synagogue, wine press, olive press and several farm animals. We were told that in the process of excavating the area they found a 1st century wine press... and who knows, maybe Jesus used it! Jesus would have spent a large amount of his upbringing in Nazareth and likely knew it well.

As we begin to have a better understanding of what life events and people Jesus was affected by, Kailey led us in a devotional looking at his most basic but profound teachings that made him so revolutionary at the time: "...love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." (Matthew 5:44). She asked us, what does it mean to love one another? How does this manifest into our everyday lives? How do we love people who perpetually abuse us or take advantage of us? It's a passage that seems so basic, yet so complex. So I encourage you to ask yourself: what does it mean to love our enemies? It may be more complex than you think!

Blessings,
Ruby

Here is a picture of the group safe and sound at the guest house.

We got here

It has been a long day, well it has really been 2 days if one really thinks about it. We left on Monday with no real problems. But as soon as we got on the plane one could really tell we were in a different culture with many Orthodox Jews having to do their morning and evening prayers on the plane. We traveled through the night with some sleep getting off the plane 12:30 pm local time. Allen quickly meet us at the airport and it turned out to be much easier getting through customs then expected so we met him in good time.We took a bus for hour and a half to Nazareth. It was a very interesting ride as we passed beside the West Bank Wall and land forms that battles were fought at in the Old Testament. We were all excited to come to the town Jesus grew up in. We had time to explore Nazareth on our own and grab some food and just take in the Holy Land. We are staying at Fauzi Azar hostel a really unique place where Muslim, Jewish and Christians all work together. I theme more prevalent in Nazareth then I expected. In the main center of the town a Mosaic and Church sit right next to each other and live in what seems to look like harmony. We also met up with Linford Stutzmen a Prof. from EMU who will lead us through about the first week of our trip as we explore the steps that Jesus walked. We are also looking forward to go to Nazareth Village tomorrow which truly will be a enriching experience.Our group is also quickly getting to know each other better and turning into good friends. I am sorry for my spelling and grammar it has been a long day and I am very tired plus I should let other people use the one computer they have here.

Peace be with you
Caleb