Jordan Field Trip Day 4: Jabbok, Jerash, and the Streets of Amman

Today we woke up later than usual with a 7am wake up call. We went to the Roman Theater at the Philadelphia located in Amman. It was neat. We then went to a huge souvenir shop while we waited for our KFC lunches to be delivered to us. They were decent, nothing special, but I appreciated the effort to get us American food. We then drove to Bethany beyond Jordan to the baptismal site of Jesus Christ. I got the bus all riled up with a game that may or may not have been inappropriate, but Professor Schade came back and put a stop to it. We then had a 180⁰ turnaround and all started singing primary baptismal songs then I went to the front of the bus and played an audio mix I have of Prophets testifying of Christ, I felt I should since I was the cause of all the rowdiness and ruckus moments earlier. Needless to say, we got into the right spirit of things before we visited the baptismal site. I really enjoyed going to the river Jordan. Professor Schade had a good devotional and the spirit was there in abundance, we then sang a few hymns. I always love being around other pilgrims who have traveled so far to be here, as we have. One guy walked by me in just swimming trunks and got in the water, I was jealous for a few reasons. First, it was hot and I had to wear jeans. Second, I wanted to submerge myself in the waters of the Jordan River. I knelt down and put my hand in the water and looked up and tried to envision the events that transpired there. We took some pictures then went to a different overview of the river. We sang “Will you be there” by Michael Jackson, I had put together a few practice sessions before this trip in order to do this. It was not as good as I would have liked, but I really enjoyed singing it. It meant a lot to me to sing it here. A year prior to this my friend Asia Rickard did the same thing so I had been looking forward to doing so. After the Jordan River we went to the border to cross back into Israel, it took us two hours once outside of the buses. One of the kids in our program named Neal got picked to get searched, it was classic, they brought him over to a booth and as the guy was putting on a plastic glove Neal looks over with a classic nervous look on his face as the worker shuts the curtain violently. We all waited for about an hour after the security check before they let us into Israel. I just did my New Testament reading for the next day. We got home just in time for dinner. Jordan was an amazing trip, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Roman Theater