Final Day in Israel (boo hoo)

What a trip this has been! Last full day. I think it's gonna be a good one. Then we fly out around midnight.

The food here has been fantastic. I've been very disciplined. Ok, the passion fruit and mango sherbets demanded multiple tastings multiple times. But other than that, I've followed a John the Baptist diet--minus the locusts. Well, maybe it was the King Herod diet. Who knows what it's called, but it sure tasted good.





I probably shouldn't share this, being a pastor and all that, but put this under the category of real life in Israel. My room mate, Tom is a retired army colonel chaplain. Great guy, real jokester. He's a vegetarian, which has an upside and a distinct downside when certain veges are consumed in large quantities. When, in the middle of the night, he broke wind, I thought it was the call of the shofar ram's horn summoning soldiers to the walls for battle.

Here he is in front of Elijah's statue, Mount Carmel.

Nachom, Our Guide

No sleep, but a great flight, and then we're on the bus with our Israeli tour guide. Though his quickness at blaming "those guys" for many things is initially a bit over the top, and the group stats to snicker whenever the words "violence" and "Arab" are used in close proximity, he turns out to be a superb guide with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Israel, history, geography and both Old and New Testaments. And I guess if I lived in a country that has gone through so many birth pains and growing up pains and was surrounded by folks who kept talking about pushing me into the sea, I might appear to have a little chip on my shoulder too. Here is Nachom drawing the layout of Roman roads on the Cesarea Hippodrome.

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Our Group

Here's 10 of our group of 18. Most are from the East Coast, from North Carolina up to Vermont. I am from the hinterland which, I think, is Norwegian for Wisconsin. Included in the group are some lay people and some pastors, who probably wish at times they were lay people. Also some wives of pastors and lay people. And right now we are all wishing we could all be lay people and just get a few hours sleeep. But Israel beckons and we are not here to nap so on with the show.