Monday, February 2, 2009

Day One In Jerusalem - Part One

January 14 (Wednesday)
Started off the morning by going to the Haas Promendade Park overlooking the city of the Jerusalem to get a bird's eye view.





Next stop: Bethelem. Since it is a Palestinian Authority city, Avi our guide was not allowed to enter. But our bus driver was an Israeli Arab, so he was allowed to go with us. Access to Bethlehem is tightly controlled and there is a huge wall around the entire city with one big checkpoint where you can enter/exit.



Just inside the walls we came to an overlook where we could see Shepherd's Field - supposedly where the angels appeared to the shepherds to announce Jesus' birth.



Our first actual stop was to the Nissan Brothers Olive Wood Factory and Store. They had tons of gorgeous pieces large and small made out of olive wood. This nativity scene was actually three feet tall and worth $20,000. After I took the picture, they wanted to know if I wanted to have it shipped home!



Nissan Brothers had arranged for us to get another tour guide for the time we spent in Bethlehem and after picking him up, we headed out to the Church of the Nativity to see the place of Jesus' birth. The church has a few different sections with different denominations laying claim and holding services here - Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Orthodox.

The Jerusalem cross on the outside of the building.



The entrance to the church. The tiny door you enter through now that you have to bend over to get through is the door of humility. You can see the remnants of two other doors - the slightly larger stone arch and then the much larger squared off door.



As we were standing outside waiting to enter, we kept seeing young children come out with wrapped presents - part of their Christmas celebration which happens later than ours. But we did a double-take when we looked at the wrapping paper - all the gifts had been wrapped in Sponge Bob Square Pants paper!

Inside the Greek Orthodox section of the church. The altar area here is above the cave where Jesus was born.





In several places there were places where you could see to the original designs, like this mosaic below the floor.



These columns had paintings on them.



We tried at this point to enter into the Grotto containing Jesus' birthplace. But it was time for the Armenians to be allowed in there for prayer and so we went over to the Roman Catholic side for a while. The Christmas Eve mass from here is broadcast around the world every year.





The church sits over the caves of St. Jerome, where he spent years translating the Scriptures and creating the Latin Vulgate. He was buried here at first but later carried back to Rome.













Finally we headed over to the Grotto. You enter through the Armenian altar area to the right of the Greek Orthodox altar area.











After our visit to the church, we headed over to Bethlehem Bible College. Here we were given a tour by the college president and founder, Rev. Bishara Awad. He started the college because too many Palestinian Christians were traveling to the US for theological study and not returning home and so he wanted to offer them that same training at home. The college does incredible work in the community including job training, a tv show, counseling center, humanitarian aid and a loan program, and also by opening its library (with books in English and Arabic) to the community. Before their library, there was no public library available to residents within the city of Jersualem! We also met his brother, the Rev. Alex Awad, who is a United Methodist minister, sponsored as a missionary through the Board of Extensions. The Awad brothers are Palestinian Christians and took time to talk to us about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian viewpoint which was very interesting.



After visiting the college, we went back to Nissan Brothers to their restaurant for lunch. Then we went to leave. The inside of the wall is decorated with a lot of graffiti.



We had to get out of the bus and go through passport control in the checkpoint building and then pick up the bus on the other side. The building is kind of open air with these big catwalks across the top. The catwalks were patrolled by the members of the Israeli military with machine guns and this particular checkpoint is called "the shooting gallery." We didn't have any trouble though and soon were headed back to Jerusalem.

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