The Stick of Judah

I just wanted to write about these amazing Torah scrolls that we saw yesterday at Neot Kedumim. I thought that it was pretty amazing to be able to see what they look like. Jesus read from similar scrolls. These ones were over 100 years old.

"17 And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

20 And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.

21 And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." (Luke 4).

"No money, no honey, and we don't get around a lot" -- Biblical Fast food at Neot Kedumim

On Sunday, a small group of us went to see Ein Karem - the traditional spot of John the Baptist's birth. It was really interesting. We saw two of the three churches that were built there to commemorate this place. It was a beautiful day and there was beautiful landscapes surrounding us. We saw some monks there. One had just begun his monkness/monketry/monkolotry/monkrimage (please help me if you know the word). Anyways, he was from New Jersey and he came up to us smoking a pipe. He was very open and a lot louder than all the monks that I have ever seen. He began to ask us where we were all from and what we were doing here. Then he told us a little about the history of the church we were at that was built during the crusades. He then explained a little about his attire and what it symbolized. It was really interesting to hear about the vow of abstinance. Three things were mentioned. 1) Poverty 2) Chastity and celibacy 3) Obedience. So he said: "we have no money, no honey and we don't get out much" as he swung around the rope with the three sybolic knots. Quite interesting to hear it said in this way from the mouth of a monk. It made us all smile a bit.

Below is the step by step process of how to make Zatar spice. We did this in the middle of a field with these plants growing there. We then made pita bread over a fire and then ate it hot with the Zatar spice that we had made. It was yummy. This was the fast food of ancient Israel. I felt so domestic. HA.

Here is the Hyssop (we call it aregano)

Here is the Sumac (not poison) it tasted like a lemon alone.

Then you grind them together (this is way too much Sumac...but I was just doing it for the picture).Add a little salt.
Grind it to a powder

Cook your pita and put on some Zatar and YUM!

Hezekiah's Tunnel

Here I am in this man-made tunnel that was made thousands of years ago. Quite an awesome experience and we got pretty wet too. We came out at the Siloam pool where the Jesus healed a blind man. "He (the formerly blind man) answered and said, A man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash: and I went and washed, and I received sight." (John 9:11). And From the Bible Dictionary's entry on Hezekiah's tunnel: "An elaborate engineering scheme extending about 1770 feet through limestone rock, bringing the waters of Gihon spring inside the walls of Jerusalem to the pool of Siloam." Here I am with Bethany Bateman who is one of the 60 wonderful young women in the JC. I am such a dork.

"Hear Jerusalem Bells a Ringin...Missionaries in a foreign field"

One of my Dreams came true yesterday. Not only have I been able to hear Jerusalem bells ringin', but I have now been able to PLAY Jerusalem bells! Brother Whipple is the organist here at the JC and he has been given the opportunity to go and play at the YMCA bell tower in West Jerusalem. It was built by the same architect who built the Empire State Building in NYC (and in the 1930s both were the tallest in NY and Jerusalem). But we got to go with him this Sunday and hear them being played. Then, he asked us if we would like to have a chance to play them. So WE DID! We played hymns that are familiar to all LDS and it was wonderful. The whole city heard the music and then I was able to ring in the noon hour in key of G! I also played "Redeemer of Israel" on the Bells! Talk about a once in a lifetime! WOW.

We can't preach the gospel here but we sure can play music and it was heard in all the city.

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?