Before that we went to the traditional site of the upper room where we had a talk from our Pentecostal pastor about the Holy Spirit coming to the disciples. One of the rules of the trip that were given to us on the first day was that there would be no theological ‘discussions’ as we’re all from different traditions and denominations and that has been really great. While I am not, nor have ever been, a Pentecostal, I really appreciated what the pastor had to say about what he felt was the birth of his tradition.

We visited David’s Tomb and the Church of Peter’s Denial. I’m sure that’s called something else, but I can’t think of it right now. We saw Caiphus’ house – complete with the dungeon that was in his basement. I’m not sure I saw this last trip, but if so I didn’t remember it. It was actually pretty depressing to me – he had his lovely <for the time> home and a hole in his floor so he could see down two flights into the dungeon where his prisoners were suffering. We crawled down in that dungeon that was dark and grimy and small and looked up the hole – and I felt in my soul that that is the way I am when I get on one of my self-righteous tears. That I look down from my lofty tower on people who are suffering in whatever sin or addiction has imprisoned them in darkness and I show them no compassion – yet Christ gets right down there with them. Quite literally in today’s case as that’s a dungeon He spent some time in.

The bus dropped us at the top of the Palm Sunday road and we had a lovely view of Temple Mount before walking down that road to the Garden of Gethsemane. That is one place I remember clearly from last time. Olive trees never die, a new one just grows up right in the middle of the old, so there’s this one grove of olive trees that’s been there since the time of Christ and that’s how they know it’s the correct location. We went into the usual section my dad takes groups into – normally you can’t go there but he knows how to bribe the right guard…

After Gethsemane we went to Bethlehem, then after Bethlehem we went into the Old City through the Zion Gate and walked around the Jewish Quarter up to the Wailing Wall. I almost fell asleep at dinner and then we had a debrief meeting to see how everyone was doing on the trip so far.

Tomorrow we get to wear shorts as we’re going into the desert: Qumran, Masada, En Gedi and the Dead Sea. I’m going to just apologize right now and get it over with – there will be no pictures! It’s more time and energy than I have. Maybe on our free days Thursday and Friday when I have a bit more time…but no promises.