BYU Jerusalem: Galilee Trip: Nov 27

Hazor was our first site this morning; it was one of the greatest of the northern Canaanite city-states that was later conquered by Joshua. It was a sweet site. The burn layers in the Tel were really cool and directly tied it to Joshua, which I thought was the coolest part of the site. We went up on the watchtower and had a devotional about the watchman on the watchtower, there was a shooting range close by and we could here gunshots while Professor Schade spoke of the wars that took place here. There was also a Solomonic Gate there which was cool. Our next site was Dan. This was probably the best Tel in our whole trip here this semester. It was so lush and green and we walked by the headwaters of the Jordan River raging down from Mt. Hermon. It was a nature hike in the cool morning mist which was a huge difference from our experience at Tel-Beersheba which was hot and dusty. We had a devotional at the place of Jeroboam's altar and high place. The altar was huge! They reconstructed a metal frame to give you an Idea of how big it is, they found one of the horns of the altar and used that for their idea of the size. We then went to the Canaanite Middle Bronze Age arched gate. This is the gate that Abraham would have passed when he went to rescue Lot. This was a sweet tie to Abraham. Last at Dan was Ahab's city gate which was all reconstructed, but impressive none the less. The next site was Caesarea Philippi. This place was special to me because of the experience I had here. We had a really nice devotional about Peter's testimony of the savior in Matthew 16. We also talked about his testimony in 2 Peter recounting the mount of transfiguration. His testimony given in Caesarea Philippi is interesting when you consider the surroundings of this account. Here are the remains of temples that were built up to: Pan, Zeus, and a Shepherd god of goats. These temples were here when Christ was here with his Disciples. Also here is the start of one of the four water heads that feed into the River Jordan is here as it comes out of a huge rock face, seeping out of the cracks. There are so many parallels and such symbolism. I felt the spirit when I was reading the passage in matt when he said, "thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God". My testimony was strengthened by the same means that it was gained and the same means Peter gained his, by the spirit of God. So after the devotional we sang the hymn 'Testimony' then Rosie and I wanted to keep singing so we sang 'I believe in Christ', it sounded so good. The other class slowly came down and some joined in. There was a tour group from the south that we're walking by and most of them paused to listen, you can tell that they were touched by our singing. We overheard one lady through the bushes say that our singing made her day. I got the chicken skins during the song, it was special. We loaded the buses and our next site was the Nimrod Fortress. We only had 20 minutes here which was a bummer because it was such a sweet castle. We ran up to the highest part of the fortress to look all around at the wonderful panoramic vista. We then drove to Har Bental which was a volcanic mound in the northern Golan Heights. From here we could see the road to Damascus and also Syria. We enjoyed the view and the bunkers and trenches left over from the '67 six days war. The sunset was amazing tonight as we drove down the mountain back to Ein Gev. We had a testimony meeting around the bonfire tonight which was really inspiring and spiritual, I learned a lot from listening and bearing my testimony. I love all the people in this program, they are all seriously quality people that are examples to me and help me to be a better person, this opportunity to be here will forever be in my heart and has changed me in ways I never knew were possible.