And the Walls Come Tumbling Down....

Monday was field trip day in Jerusalem and this week we went on what is called the Jericho/ conquest field trip. This field trip was really interesting and really hot! It is only May and we are already melting so I don't even know how we are going to handle August....haha should be interesting.

Our first stop was an overlook of the Judean Wilderness. The Judean Wilderness is basically what you would find in you looked up wilderness in the encyclopedia. It is completely barren and empty as far as you can see. This is where Christ fasted for forty days and seeing how empty and hot this place was adds a whole new aspect on how difficult this would have been for him

Next we visited a monastery commemorating the mountain where Christ was tempted. The monastery was built by the Greek Orthodox and they were serious about building it on the mountain because it is literally on the side of a cliff! Brother Manscilll warned us before we got off the bus and the path to get to the monastery is lovingly referred to as the "suicide death walk" because it is so steep. Luckily we all survived, even though having to cover our heads with scarfs certainly did not make it easy! It turned out to be really cool and pretty up there though, and they actually have the exact rock satan tempted Jesus to turn into bread there. Haha it really is quite astonishing how all these churches find obscure relics...don't quite know how they do it! Especially since another church in Jerusalem claims to have the exact rock too....

i told you it was a cliff...

the holy rock

Our final stop was Jericho, which holds the honor of being both the oldest and the lowest city in the world! We visited the spring that Elisha healed with salt and all of the ancient ruins of Jericho and its wall. Some parts of the Tel Jericho are actually dated around 8000 BC in the oldest parts which is amazing. After exploring the ruins we read the scriptural account of Joshua and Jericho, right where it happened and sang the popular song about the walls tumbling down. After we got back to the center we crashed from the long day in the sun, but it was so worth it!