Some Free Time

Yesterday, After my two morning classes I had the rest of the day off. So with my roommates and some friends we went our into the Old City to explore. We went to the Armenian Quarter and attended a service at the Tomb Chapel Of St. James the Major, St. James Cathedral. It was such an ornate building, different from other domed churches I have been to. It had the classic high domed cealing, but what was different was the decorations inside. There were ghostly paintings of the saints and the Savior all over the walls and many hanging ordiments, when I say many I mean over a hundred. They were all unpulished silver with some consrvative colored glass on them. The service began, it was all in Armenian. At one point after ten minutes I crossed my legs, one of the clergy-man came and told me to uncross them. The service was very different. One of the men walked around at one point with incenses and shook and jingly metal incense holder at different parts of the church, namely paintings. After the service we went to Dormition Abbey. This was an awesome building! we went downstairs where there was a service being held surrounding the supposed burrial place of the Virgin Mary. Though it may not be where she is burried it was interesting to think that I could be that close to the resting place of the mother of Jesus Christ. We then went to King David's Tomb, where he was supposedly burried. It was in the Jewish Quarter, and as custom with holy sites the men had to wear a Kippah when going in to see the Tomb, they give us a cardboard one to use. As you walk into the chamber there are orthodox jews praying in Hebrew and reading all around you. I went up and placed my hand on the Tomb as I can hear the screaming prayer of a woman on the other side of the partition (the men and women are always segregated at Jewish holy sites). Speaking of loud worship, we then went to the Upper Room, a reconstruction of what the location would have looked like where the Savior institued the Sacrament during Passover. There was a group of about 15 people who were like unto a penicostal faith, they were screaming, dancing, slapping the walls, and a man was on the floor face down with his shoes off. We waited a few minutes, but when we found that they were just warming up we realized there was another two rooms up higher. We gathered there which was more private and the acoustics were still really good. All 12 or so of us started singing "Nearer My God To thee", it brough the spirit in so strong. Then we sang "there is a green hill far away" which is my favorite Sacrament Hymn. Jordan, my roommate (one of the Jonas Brothers), read the account of the last supper. We then ended our little spur of the moment devotional by singing "I Stand All Amazed"...wow, all I can say was that all our thoughts were on the savior and it was an intimate and special moment that we shared together. Though you could still here the slapping of walls and screams from downstairs, we had a small reverent devotional with our small group. This was a humbling and learning experience for me. I wanted to just start singing our Hymns in the bigger room, my thoughts were, "They don't own this room, we can worship here as well, Its not a competition, but we should just start singing over their screams" but I am so glad that we found and decided to go into the upper-upper room and have a more quiet and reverent setting for our worship. We went on the roof of that location and took some photos and looked at the distance from that location to the Mount of Olives I thought about all the time Christ had to think about what was about to happen. Its probably a 20 minute walk at least. It was a good experience. As I think of it now, I am grateful to be around people my age who would do something like this on their free time. To visit sites, sing hymns , and read from the scriptures and invite the spirit has fostered some very special moments for me during my trip and is more important to me than shopping and eating at cool places.