Swimming where David Swam

Just a quick entry. Here are the waters of En Gedi. This is a natural spring that flows into the Dead Sea. It is near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. It is a place where King David came to swim. Pretty amazing to have this Oasis in the middle of the blazing desert. That is my dad being drenched by the waterfall coming down from the spring. Nephi and Lehi surely swam or at least stopped for water here when they left Jerusalem. It is fresh water and in the desert water is everything. Surely they knew of it and drank from it on their way out.

"I am doing a great work and cannot come down"

Here are some shots of the walls of Jerusalem. I just finished my hometeaching last night. I guess it was a little late in the month, but still 100%. We decided to talk about President Uchtdorf's priesthood message of the green light on the jet and Nehemiah. It is neat because we are studying about the different destructions and restorations of Jerusalem in our Judaism class. It is neat to be able to see the wall and even walk on it. The wall in these pictures is not the wall that Nehemiah built, but it is still really beautiful. In our message, we talked about how we can be distracted from things that are most important. Like the pilots in the jet plane who were distracted by the broken light and eventually crashed into the everglades. But though Nehemiah was temped to come down from building the wall, he said: "I am doing a great work and cannot come down". I think it is pretty easy to become distracted and want to come down, but I like thinking about Nehemiah and how he finished what the Lord wanted him to do. My mission president told me after the mission that one of Satan's greatest tools for faithful LDS people is to get them to do a lot of good things and to ignore doing the critical things. That has made me think often about my priorities and what is most important.

The pictures are of the wall and us on the wall. The last one is of Dad talking to a Jew at the Western Wall. (to be added)

The Exodus (continued)

Bonding and a Kibutz

The Egypt trip was amazing. Life changing and bowel changing. I thought that I would be strong stomached but I was hit by the curse of the mummies and it was fun, but everyone bonded in their weakness...of bowels. I think we could count on one hand the number of people who did not get diarrhea while there. I feel like everyone is like a family now. So on the way to Egypt we stopped at a Jewish Kibutz where they live a life that is not dissimilar to the law of consecration.
It was really interesting.

Abraham's Wasteland

Other things we sas on the way down included some places where Abraham had lived that had thousands of years of history just screaming from the stones (like Beersheba). We saw where the Israelites stopped while wandering in the wilderness. Talk about wilderness! Desert WASTELAND. I have no idea how the Israelites survived in that for 40 years. This wasteland forced these people to rely completely on God. I guess we all have our wastelands that point us to God.

Pointing to Heaven in Giza - Was Moses a tourist?

We went to Giza/Cairo on the first night in Egypt and got to see the Sound and Light show where they light up the pyramids and the sphinx at night. It was amazing to see these huge monumental buildings lit up at night. We got up the next morning and went to see the three great pyramids and the sphinx in the day time. They only let 150 people in every day and we had 80 in our group so we had to go early to get in line. It was worth it though and it was blazing like Vegas or Phoenix and there were vendors everywhere. We went inside the biggest one and I almost suffocated because there is virtually no ventalation and tons of people going inside at once so you breathe in everyone's CO2, but it was totally worth it becuase when do you get to go inside of this pyramid again?! Actually, these pyramids were tourist attractions when Moses was there. Seriously they are old and I'm not joking about the Moses thing. We saw some other things and bought some Papyrus from a factory there in Cairo. I waited till Luxor to buy mine and I am glad, becuase everyone got ripped off in Cairo (to some extent).

Tantalus ate some Grapes from the Nile - Muy Pobres

(this is what it looked like from our hotel)

The next day we went to Luxor and had an unmatchable experience. We had two and a half days in Luxor. This is when everyone got sick like dogs. You cant drink the water or eat the fruit or anything fresh. I was on a diet of stright carbs. Bread, noodles, potatoes etc. It was crazy too because we stayed in some nice hotels where it looked like you were on a cruise the food was so good. It was funny because their salad bar remained untouched because all 80 of us knew it was unsafe. Some people disobeyed and paid the price. I obeyed but still got hit. Ok, Luxor in a nutshell.... like I said, we stayed in an amazing hotel on the nile and rode Falucca boats up the nile to a place where we rode camels through a village and sailed back on the nile to our hotel. The poverty there was enough to throw you into shock. Worse than anything I saw in Chile, and it was bad there too. On the boad ride back to the Hotel, some jumped in and got even sicker.

I love to see the Temple - Dust from the Book of Abraham

We saw the temples of Karnak and Luxor (both in Luxor which was formerly Thebes). Karnak was my favorite of everything in Luxor. It's the one in the picture where I am standing by the huge pilars. There are so many similarities between our temple ceremonies and what is all over the walls of Egyptian temples. I will show you later with pictures I have taken of it all. Wow. It was amazing. I will blog on it later the next time i go to Hebrew U. We also went to the Valley of the kings...this is where all the Pharaoh mummies were found including King Tut. It was amazing too. Temple stuff on these walls too. They knew EVERYTHING, and wrote it on their walls...they just didn't have the priesthood even though they acted like it. We went to the place near there where we get some of what we have in the Pearl of Great Price. (pit tomb 33). This is said to be the place where Anthony Lebolo retrieved the mummies and manuscripts that eventually ended up in the hands of Joseph Smith who then translated them into the writings we have today in the Book of Abraham. I thought of all the things in the book of Abraham from which I base much of my motivation to be righteous. I actually (accidentally) dropped my scriptures in the dirt there. I can't get it all out, but I kind of think it is cool to have dirt from the place it is from in the pages and binding of my representation of the real manuscript.

"Moses' God IS God"

We also went to Hapshetsut's temple complex (picture on the blog) which also had lots of initiatory inklings on its walls. We shopped a little in this market that was really cool at night and then took a midnight train from Luxor to Cairo over night. That is when my bowels were wonderful. Wonderfully loose that is! AHH. Yuck I know. The next day we had sacrament meeting (on a Friday). In the same day, we went to a museum where they had all this cool stuff that was taken from the tombs (king TUT was amazing!) The real thing. Wow. But...The number 1 coolest thing is that they had the actual body (mummy) of Ramses II - the man who may have shook Moses' hand. If it was Ramses II though...think of it! I saw the face of the man who saw Moses and who Moses was afraid of when he said to God "who am I to speak to Pharaoh..." He was VERY WELL preserved. Just looked like an old man, hair and all. Here is a picture of the net of him. That was amazing. We went to Hard Rock cafe and then to the largest open air market in the world (on the same day as sacrament meeting so it was a weird day and i had a huge headache, but it was worth it).... We drove from there to Sinai the next day. Jacob was actually mummified too but I guess he is already a resurrected being so he would be a little more glorious than this guy!

The Highest Mountain and The Highest In Us

We saw lots of desert and some of the Red Sea here and there. We stopped at some of the places where Moses and the Israelites would have stopped in the Exodus. Rephidim was my favorite. The sun was just going down and we saw the traditional place where Moses held up his arms while Joshua and the Amalekites battled below. We got to the hotel in the middle of a bunch of mountains at nightfall.

We awoke at 2 am and hiked up Mount Sinai with beduins and watched the sunrise from the top. There were camels passing us the whole way up until the final ascent. The whole time I was thinking about what Moses would have been thinking as he ascended this mountain. You can watch the time lapse video of me hiking down after the sun came up and I will post more pictures soon.


I have been reading Truman G. Madsen's book called The Highest In Us. Reading this book has caused me to think much about becoming the Andrew Scot Proctor who God is familiar with. It takes you through all of these evidences of why we are more than just organisms who live for about 70 years and that's it. I was asked to be the student who gave the devotional at the top of the mountain. I was so exited that I read Moses 1 and Exodus 3 the night before. I am so glad I did. I thought about the Lord appearing to Moses there, but also about how Satan was appeared there. I came up with a new reason for why Satan came. God wants us to become the highest person we can become. Moses ascended to this highest place and God was going to teach Moses about who he really was and what he could become. Satan didn't want this to happen so he came too. God said: "Moses My son..." declaring that he was divine offspring. Satan said: "Moses son of man..." saying that Moses had no divinity within him. But Satan was cast out and Moses was shown everything: "worlds without number". God showed Moses that He was really God, and then He told Moses that His whole purpose was to help him to become the same. In other words God said: Moses, look at what I have done as a god, you are capable of doing this. And, oh, by the way...helping you to get to that point is what I work on all day every day..." OR "This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39).

It was neat thinking of this on the top of this huge mountain where this all happened. After this grand theophany, Moses finally understood who the highest in him was. Who is the highest in you? How is Satan trying to distract you from becoming your highest self?

Exodus

At the Great Pyramid of Giza. This entry I am going to let the pictures talk. I am at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a better connection and can upload more.


Here is a nice view of the second great pyramid in Giza with our buses a ways off.






















Here i am on the smallest of the three.

This is Pit tomb 33 where Anthony Lebolo found (or so many say) the mummies, manusripts and facsimiles that eventually came into the hands of Joseph Smith. Thus my triple is open to the page with fascimile 2.













At Hapshetsut's temple
























At the temple of Karnak (this was truly amazing) and the other is on top of Sinai with the sun comint up.













Barefoot on the top!
















I just had to do this even though my feet were a little hashed from hiking up. Moses' feet were probably more calassed than mine.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

This was one of the biggest Welcomings of the Sabbath at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for quite a while. Captured with a timelapse function on my camera. This was right before it became prohibited to take any sort of photography. This is the holiest place in the world for the Jews. There were probably upwards of 7,000 Jews praying and chanting and singing songs to welcome in the Shabbat in hopes of the Messiah coming. Interacting with the Jews here is amazing because it has really helped me think about what I am saying when I pray. Every time I end a prayer it is "in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen". I think about what I am saying more now because talking to Jews who believe that Jesus is not Jesus Christ, but just merely Jesus the man from Nazareth like many others who claimed Messiahship and passed away. They just think He was a Pharisaic Rabbi who studied Torah and worked miracles like others in history have done. But to them, Christ He is not. He is not the Messiah nor the anointed one, nor anything other than a man like Confucius who's teachings made a great impact on the world, but who didn't save anyone.

You really don't realize how important something is to you, until you experience the absense of it. Then you find how much you really love and appreciate that thing that has been such a part of you. Saying "Jesus CHRIST" just seems right or normal to me and yet to millions of people it is not normal...it is even blasphemous. But in the end, every knee will bow and every tongue will finally confess that Jesus IS the CHRIST, Χριστός (Khristós) -Greek- for "the anointed one", the MESSIAH, מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ,) -from the Hebrew- for "the Messiah". Yet now, to the Jews, the Messiah has not come and they go to the Wall of the Temple of Solomon where it was prophecied that the Messiah would come. For them, there is no atonement, no resurrection, no life...just a longing for a future event that will never happen. However, it was quite the experience to see them with such devotion and hope at this place so holy to them. Almost other-worldly. Their devotion to their religion and their love for that in which they believe is an impressive site. Such devotion is difficult to find in the United States or many other parts of the world. But no matter how many of them there are and how beautiful their alms and their prayers and their songs and their dances (I even participated with them), it doesn't make them right. The majesty of it almost makes you wish they were right. Egyptians built the incalculable pyramids with equally impressive devotion...to gods who never existed.

I am grateful for my knowledge of Jesus CHRIST, the Messiah, who came. And the devotion of the Jews at the Western Wall instills in me a desire to be more devoted to mine.

Shabbat Shalom.

The Star of David and the East wind.

This last week has felt like a month but a great month. I still have so much to learn and I love it. The more that I experience here, the more I want to learn. I am so glad that I get to actually live here. It is interesting because every time we all go into the old city we look and act like tourists who are so temporary, but we are not tourists. I don't like acting like a tourist or looking like one, but the only way to not look like a tourist here is to either 1. grow a long beard and get a head wrap and get a little dirty with the street mess and start selling beans and lettuce, 2. buy a kippa for my head and grow out my sideburns super long and curl them and strap a philactery to my head and wear a black robe suit. Or I can dress up like a franciscan monk. Other than that, pretty much everyone looks like a tourist (in the old city where we spend most of our time). I hope I can get past the point of feeling like a tourist and just be present here. We do leave quite a bit, but it will be good leaving.

I do not have much time to write now, but I wanted to enter something on here and not fall out. I have been learning the most interesting things. Tonight we are going to the Western Wall to bring in the Sabbath (Shabbat) and we will have our Sabbath tomorrow (Saturday). I am excited to see Manache (the Chilean Jewish Israeli Mormon who I translated for last week at church who only speaks Hebrew and Spanish).

I only wanted one thing while I came here to bring home and I found it this week. It was a ring that had the Star of David engraved in it. I found it in a shop on Jewish Quarter Rd in the old city between the Jewish and Armenian Quarters of the city. I wasn't looking for it deliberately, but I saw it and got it for a pretty good price after talking the guy down a little. I love it for many reasons. The star of David is so meaningful to me and will be more meaningful I think the more I learn here. Here is why:

1. It is on the flag of Israel and it will make me think of this place and the great memories made here.



2. It is a symbol of Revelation (found on some temples) and when the Urim and Thummim came together it formed a star (the Star of David). So it represents how the light came unto Joseph Smith and how the revelations are now available to us.



3. It is a representation of David who was a Prophet-King. Helps me remember that I was born to be a King and to be careful to be strong so that I do not fall like David.



4. My patriarchal blessing mentions the Lord expecting me to be like David except for his fall.

So it is like my own personal CTR ring. I love it and just try not to flash it around much when I am in the Muslim quarter of the city.

The east winds have been blowing and it is neat to experience except for when it blows you so hard you have to hold on to the street signs! (see picture).

Saturday Shabbat

This week has been so much more than I ever had imagined. Every minute is a new thing that I had not thought about. There is so much depth here. Today I had some experiences that were unforgettable. It was my first Fast Shabbat (Sabbath) in Jerusalem. It was Saturday and yet we treated it as we treat our Sunday in the US. I woke up to the early morning call of prayer at 4 am. I am beginning to love it. As I type now at 7:30 pm it is again heard. It is like nothing you have ever heard. I cannot replicate it. But the prayer call and prayer of the Moslems resonates in all of the city. This morning I woke up early and went to the top of the center and looked out over the city and played some hymns on my harmonica. It was a good way to start. I then went to choir and we sang everyone’s favorite hymn in parts. It was beautiful. The best part about it is that we sing as we look out over the city and it just gets you. We then had Sacrament meeting. It was such an experience. I hate having to use words to describe this all because it is clearly insufficient. But imagine taking the sacrament as you look over the city where it was first administered! I was trying to figure out how to process it in my heart and mind. Then we had the opportunity to bear our testimonies. I got up first and shared mine. I have been trying to get in the mode of being very reserved in what I say here because of the strict rules, so my brain was trying to juggle my rules of non-proselytizing with my desire to share my feelings. I felt inadequate to express myself and all I said is that I know that the church is true and also that I wanted to become everyone’s true friend and that I hoped that we would not limit ourselves to bearing our testimonies ONLY to testimony meetings, but that we would be able to feel comfortable bearing it in every place we go and at any time we feel to do so. I have been trying to find people who I can just talk to openly about the way that I have been feeling about this experience and the different things we are seeing and learning. There are a few. But there are lots of really fresh people here too who are very young. Today when we where walking to the garden tomb, we passed by the place of the skull and I said “WOW, look its Golgotha” and she said: “wait, what exactly is Golgotha?” I was a little flabbergasted inside, but I did my best to respectfully explain it to her as if she really did not know. As I walked with her more, she had more similar questions. After I thought about it and remembered that I did pray that I would be able to bless the lives of other people on this trip and it was a good answer.

So we went to Shabbat school (Sunday school on Saturday) and there are quite a few Spanish speakers who come to our ward. So I was asked to go and help out in that class. There were people from Mexico, from Bolivia, from Cuba and from CHILE! The family from Chile was amazing to come to know. I talked to the father quite a bit in Spanish. His story is incredible! I could not believe it. He is Jewish in ethnicity and lived in Concepcion Chile for much of his life. This is where he joined the church. He said that he converted to Jesus Christ. He said that he received his endowment in Brazil before Chile had a temple. In later years, he felt that he needed to remember his Jewish roots and decided to move to Israel and he did with his family. He has been here for quite a while, but for a long time he had no idea that there was a church here, so he has never gone to church until recently. I need to get more details on the story, but he only began coming recently (like a month ago?). I was the one who got to translate for him in Elders Quorum. It was such an interesting experience and I am a horrible translator. He knows Spanish and Hebrew and much Arabic as well. But he was wearing a yamika and looked very jewish. His son was JUST released this week from the Israeli army service after 2+ years of service. He also can’t remember if he is a priest or what his standing is as a member, but he is one. So even though we can’t proselyte here, we can still do missionary work with the ALREADY members. Haha.

We also went to the garden tomb. It was a great experience. It is so clean compared to the pathway we had to walk to get there. It was a little tourist ridden. Maybe because it is Saturday. I liked it a lot and I went with a group of about ten students. We were all a little weak from our fasting, but we went in this covered stone seating area inside the garden and even though there were thousands of people, no one seemed to come in where we were. We also had a very cute tour guide who was British (Burt). At every stop he would bear his testimony of Christ and share with us a few more things that are evidences of why it could be here that it all happened. He said that we can’t really know if it was here, but we can know that Jesus lives and that even though it may not have been this place that he arose from, He did rise. It was really neat, and British accents always seem to make things seem more authoritative. We agreed with him in all he said. It was quite the experience.