July 22, 2010
Today we couldn't decide what to do, so we headed into the old city to see Johnny. His wife Adele came in while we were in the shop and it was so good to see her again. After visiting for awhile, we headed to the temple mount to try and get in on the tunnel tours under the mount. They are only by reservation, and nothing was available until late this evening so we gave it a miss. We then wandered around through streets we hadn't seen yet and then headed to the Temple institute. This is where they are building or restoring all the objects that will go in the new temple that they will build. They do extensive research there and have all the details from the Bible and other sources, in order to make the things in the way that God commanded. We were with a large group of teenagers from the US but I was impressed at how much they knew and at how good their Hebrew was. The guide was questioning them and switching back and forth between English and Hebrew. We were lost, but they seemed to have no problems keeping up with what she was saying.
We also had a nice lunch in the old city at Christ Church. They have a nice quiet courtyard and put on a nice home cooked meal. It is like an oasis in the hubbub of activity surrounding it.
We took the bus back to the apartment for an hour of rest, then headed back to the Old City at 5 pm. We were to meet Johnny and Adele at the top of the Mount of Olives to see their outreach to the Muslims. We took bus 18 to Central station and then transferred to Bus 1 which goes right to the Western wall. That was our first time on bus 1 and it was a lot of fun. We went right through some traditional Jewish neighborhoods and we were amazed by the busy streets and the large families travelling here and there. We continue to be impressed by the Jewish fathers and how they help care for their children, and by how the children seem to look up to, and adore their fathers (Abba's.) A large family got on and I gave up my seat so the mother and three of her small children could sit down. They were originally from New York and were very friendly. It was nice to watch them talk and interact with Michele and Diane. So many of the Jewish people seem to have a wall around them, and avoid contact of any kind with us, but both the mother and father were open and friendly so it was such a treat. Afterwards, both Michele and I commented on how it made the tragedy of the holocaust seem so real, to think of lovely families like that being treated like animals and slaughtered. It is horrifying to think of man's inhumanity to man.
We got off at the western wall and we had planned to take a taxi, but none of the drivers wanted to turn on their meters. Eventually we found one who said he would, but it turned out he cheated us anyway. He was bragging about his two wives and driving too fast, and had his meter hidden and set wrong. It left a bad taste in our mouths and we were angry for quite a while as we walked around the hotel looking for our friends. Suddenly we came upon our other friend John, from the two church services on Sunday. He had said he was leaving on Monday morning so we were very surprised to see him. It turns out he had hooked up with this same group, doing outreach, and was attending the same function. He knew where they were meeting and we all joined in on the worship (in Arabic) and heard some of the testimonies of things that had happened in the last week. They had handed out about 23,000 packages with Bibles and the Jesus DVD and they had good reports. We ended up leaving early as we wanted a ride back down the Mount of olives and Adele had to go early to take care of her kids. We didn't want to brave walking, or taking another taxi so we jumped at the chance for a ride. Adele is so sweet and she drove out of her way to take us right to our bus stop for good old 18. It was so neat to see all those believers on fire for the Lord, worshipping while looking out over the old city and the temple mount. There were also many fireworks going off all over town as the students were celebrating their completion of exams. Other than the taxi driver, it was another good day!
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