Day Four

I cannot believe how fast our time in Jordan flew by. Four days went by in a blink.

Our last day started off with a visit to the New Amman Mosque-the largest in Jordan.

Most mosques we have visited require that women cover their heads with a scarf. This mosque, however, was a tad bit more strict. In order to get in we had to wear a black hooded robe

Yes, we kind of felt like death-eaters. 

It was actually pretty fun though, and luckily we were the first visitors of the day so we got the freshly-laundered robes, which was in and of itself worth waking up at the crack of dawn.

Me, Sister Brown (one of my favorite people here), and Melissa rocking our robes

all of the stylish JC ladies!

Our next stop was the citadel of Amman and National Museum. The citadel was basically another smaller set of roman ruins and the museum was very interesting. They had lots of antiquities, statues, and even some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

posing at the Temple of Hercules 

Our last stop was Bethbara, the baptismal site of Jesus. This site is more accurate than the site run by the kibbutz in Israel, because bible scholars believe Christ was probably baptized on the Jordan side of the river. They have a beautiful (and air conditioned) church on site and you are actually able to descend into the water. It was too muddy and gross for be to brave totally immersing myself, but I did put my feet in :) All three religion professors here gave us amazing lessons about baptism here and it turned out to be my favorite spot of the day-even if it is not the exact location where Christ was baptized.

The spot where they believe Christ descended into the water-the river has shrunk in size over the last 2000 years so the supposed exact spot is now on dry land

Church of Bethbara

Holy water used for sprinklings

the Jordan River