C. S. L. R. & LL: ISRAEL- HOLY LAND- Arrival and Day 1 {Sea of Galilee}

I don't even know where to begin!
My brain and body are still spinning from the most incredible trip of a lifetime

that Casey and I were able to go on.

Back at the end of February I got a text in the middle of the night from Stephanie.

Not the usual type of text I get from her!

WHAT?!

Israel sounded neat to visit, but was never really ever on my list or radar.
In fact, we were in the motion to plan Tahiti for my big 40th birthday.
Things took a complete turn, lol.

Oh, and we had 2 days to decide if we wanted to go or not.

Casey wasn't even home, he was in Wyoming.

I may have told her yes without a confirmation from him first, ha!

How do you turn down an opportunity like this?
You just don't!
It's Jesus land.
An easy duh, yes!

We had about 6 weeks to get flights, and figure out

work and babysitting.

Luckily everything else was taken care of by the travel agency.

Bountiful Travel is super great to work with.

And 6 weeks to get crazy excited about the biggest trip I will ever take.

Even with my insane love for beaches, you can't top the Holy Land.
There is no possible way to trump the actual places Jesus lived, taught, walked and

performed miracles.

I still get goosebumps that I was there!

I figured it would be easiest to break up the documenting by days.

Buckle up, its going to be a lot of info as we did and saw SO much!
This post is especially a doozy. Sorry in advance.

The night before our early morning flight.

I text Stephanie and asked, does your kitchen look like this?

She replied back, YES!

Our mom must have taught us this.

Schedules taped to the cupboards and sticky note reminders everywhere.

The poor Whitmers who were babysitting!

They know our kids so well.

But with the end of the school year and all of their activities for the next 10 days,

it gets a little bonkers to keep straight.

We left at 4:30am to catch our first flight to Newark.
It was a full flight. Why so many people up this early?
It was on time which eased my heart knowing
we wouldn't miss our connecting flight.

Landed!

Hello NYC skyline!

Man was it torture only being able to stare at it!
It has been 16 years since I have been to New York City.
I wish we had a day, shoot, even a few hours to explore real quick.

A trip for another time.

We grabbed some lunch, and went through customs no problem.

We were in our seats and high fived each other when nobody came to sit in the middle seat.
We had the row to ourselves!

It seemed like we were possibly going to take off a little ahead of schedule!
I couldn't believe everything was going so smoothly.

All of a sudden the lady sitting right in front of me frantically stood up and was

nudging the man next to her, that was in front of Casey.

She then started yelling for help and I noticed the man starting to slump over.

Shamefully my first thought was, this better not delay our flight (not proud of that).

He was having a medical emergency.

People started running over claiming they were nurses or medical students.
The flight attendant also rushed over.

The lady in front of me hopped over the seat and was now sitting in the middle

of Casey and I to give them more room.

I was confused thinking she was his husband.

Nope, just strangers.

He seemed out of it.
He said he was just exhausted and had taken a sleeping pill.

But then he started vomiting (luckily in bags).

Police are now on board and asking him questions.

The man is claiming he is fine and didn't need assistance.

He couldn't even sit straight up and could hardly form sentences!

The cops said they couldn't force him to get help but the flight
attendant wanted him off the plane.

Uh, ya! I'm with her!
But the nurses said give him some time before taking
him off to see if the meds he had just taken were able to get in his system better.

With the sick man, cops, flight attendant and helping nurses all arguing with each other on what to do
the flight attendant sternly said,
I will ask him in 2 different languages to see if he is capable to stay onboard.

"Sir, are you physically able to fly the next 10 hours without issues?"
In English then in Arabic.

Man- Yus, I m fen.

AGHH!

He is not fine!

At this point it has been 30 minutes and the paramedics arrived.

The second they saw him they clearly knew he could not make the flight and

took him away in wheel chair.

Thank you, paramedics!

The lady moved back to her seat.
Kind of fun getting to know her.
She lives in Israel but comes to visit often

because they lived in the USA for some years but decided home was in the Middle East.

What a tender mercy

that this happened minutes before take off.
If it hadn't, we no doubt would have had to reroute in air for an emergency

landing who knows where, and most likely would have had to join the tour late.
#Blessed.

Waited another 15 minutes for them to clean
his area and then we were finally air bound!!

(before the man passed out)

Kind of fun that our final view leaving America was of the iconic Statue of Liberty!

It would be a 10 hour flight to Tel Aviv.

Since Israel is 10 hours ahead of our time, we would need to sleep
as much as we could on this flight.

We were served dinner.

Then we both went to sleep for the "night".
Poor Casey. His back went out days before we left.
He was pretty darn miserable and didn't sleep much at all.

I slept about 7 hours.
I woke up here and there to move around, but felt pretty good overall.

We got breakfast.
Pretty tasty for airplane food!

It wasn't much longer until we approached our destination!
Hello, Israel!!

We landed and followed every instruction carefully that was sent by

the travel agency to make it out of the airport.
This is the Middle East after all, I didn't want to get shot at!

The process was confusing, yet surprisingly pretty easy.
Kinda sounded contradictory.

Just lots of little check out steps I would have for sure missed if I were on my own.

I thought for sure we had missed our shuttle bus with the delay

and that we would need to take a taxi.
Sure enough Casey spotted Lisa Spice holding her Bountiful Travel sign.

They had waited for us!!

She greeted us with the BIGGEST hugs and said we are so happy you are here!

So. am. I!!

We waited for a few other people and then we were off!

Lisa gave us a quick rundown of some things while we were

all glued to the windows taking everything in while driving along.

We got to the hotel about noon.
This was our only down day since people were arriving at different times.

All breakfasts and dinners were covered by the travel agency.
Dinner was from 6-9 at the hotel restaurant.

That gave us 6 hours to do whatever we wanted.
Sleeping purposely not one of them if we wanted to stay on track with jet lag!

Tel Aviv is a city on the Mediterranean coast.
It is the second largest city in Israel, Jerusalem being the biggest.

Tel Aviv is very modern in the sense of culture and style.
It felt like we were in a typical beach town in California.
Nowhere else in Israel did it feel that way.

This was the view out of our hotel window.
Beautiful!

Of course I had to immediately check out the beach!
It stopped raining right before we landed.
But it was windy and cold.
No swim suit for me!

We grounded in the sand and sat on these chairs enjoying
the ocean breeze and sounds of the waves.

Still couldn't believe I was sitting on the beach of the Mediterranean Sea!
My heart was happy.

We walked the boardwalk and had our first experience
ordering food with a poor language barrier.

With lots of pointing and nodding we came out with some yummy lunch!

Lunch with a Mediterranean view.
That pistachio ice cream was money!

Can you read that?
They tell you your total in shekels.
Which then we would ask back, American dollars?
Most of the time they were good at converting the prices.
Sometimes I think they just made up a price on the spot
that would be close enough.

We walked around some more.

This boat harbor was all the heart eyes.

Popped in some beach shops to look around and get souvenirs for the kids.

I asked the man to get me authentic Israel candy.

He gave us a quick lesson on their money system.

Still don't understand it that well.

But 3 shekels equal about $1.

Our hotel, Herods.

We loved the hotel, but not the man it's named after:)

Stephanie and Travis still hadn't arrived so we went back to our room.

I went to the bathroom and when I came back I found him like this.

So much for no sleeping!

It was 6 o'clock.
I woke the sleeping baby so he would sleep that night
and headed down to dinner.
I thought it was weird that a man was sitting on a chair in the corner of the
elevator. He looked at us strangely.

A couple walking by said that is a Shabbat elevator.
Huh?
I guess it works on a special mode, operating automatically, to satisfy the Jewish law
requiring Jews to abstain form operating electrical switches on the Sabbath.

It was Saturday night, the Sabbath.
We quickly hopped off and went to a normal one.

So interesting!

I didn't know what to expect for the food.
Lisa did tell us that the water is safe to drink and no worries on the food.

All safe to eat.
She did warn us to gear up for lots of falafels, shawarma,
and schnitzel ( a thin slice of chicken, breaded and fried).

All dinners were buffet style with TONS of options.

Good options!!

We were pleasantly surprised.

The dessert, OH the dessert!!!

I was in sugar heaven!

Stephanie and Travis walked in as we were eating!

Hugs and then they hurried and grabbed some plates.

She took this of us eating as she walked in.

So happy they made it!

We got caught up on our travel stories.
Sounded like every flight in our group had a horror story to tell.
They got delayed for a few hours because they couldn't get the airplane door to shut.
They all had to get off the plane, then reboard an hour later.
They overheard the flight attendant say someone didn't shut it hard it enough.
AGH!!
I'll take the man passing out over that!

Then it was off to bed sweet bed!

* This is where the Holy Land tour starts.
My mind is still mush from information being thrown at us left and right.
So much to take in.
You should see my notes folder in my phone.
I didn't want to forget anything John said, but also didn't want to miss

actually seeing the sites because I was too busy typing things in my phone.
The balance was tricky!
I wanted to do this post asap before details started slipping my memory.

Grateful for my own personal notes, and notes from others in our group that has

since been shared to help us remember every ounce of what we experienced together.
Words (especially mine) cannot describe the week adequately.
It was almost as like I was living and moving in a sacred bubble.
But I will try my best.*

Day 1, Sunday morning

We needed to be in the hotel lobby with our luggage at 7am.
Breakfast needed to be eaten beforehand as well.

Casey sent me this picture saying I was missing out
while I was still up in the room getting ready.

That is more like it!
Take us Americans to the baked goods section:)

We met our group and boarded our tour buses.
There were 2 different tour groups that week with Bountiful Travel.

Our group was with John Hilton, the other was with Gerrit Dirkmaat as their guide.

We did not stay together with the other tour bus at all.
Once in a while we would see them at some sites, but other than that we were with
just our group.

Saying goodbye to Lisa.
She was helping Dirkmaat.

I was kind of sad she wouldn't be with us because she is a HOOT in a half.

The Follow Him podcast is videoed in her home and she helps with editing.
She's basically famous, wink.

Once we were on our bus I wasn't sad at all!
Our new friends already photobombing.
It was going to be a good time!

Many, many hours spent on this bus.

Let me introduce these 2 main characters:)

The first is Machmoud, our driver.

He was born in a Bedouin tent.
Was raised and lived there until he got married at the age of 24.
He is now the leader of the tribe Shaq (sounds like shake)
of about 10,000 people.

He is a rags to riches story.
(You will get to see his house later on!)
He owns 5 tour buses.
In Israel, all tours guides must be licensed by the country, or accompanied by one.
So most buses have a driver, Israeli guide, plus their normal guide.
Over covid Machmoud got his touring license, so it was just John and Machmoud!

He is legendary and HIGHLY sought after.

Over the years he learned very quickly that the LDS tour groups are gold.

He will only drive for them now.
If any General Authorities come to Israel, he is their driver.
John joked that Machmoud has had more General Authorities
over at his home than anyone in the world.
In reality that is truth, not a joke.

In fact, just the week before Elder Uchtdorf was on this very bus.

John said he will no longer lead a tour unless Machmoud is his driver.

At the end of the first day it was obvious as to why.
He was a logistical genius.
He knew Israel like the back of his hand.

He saved us from having to walk far distances to site entrances and could

park that bus in just about any size of space.

Since he is the Shaq leader, he is known and respected by almost

every person we crossed paths with.

He was also like a dad to our group, making sure we were safe at all times.

(I'll share a crazy story later!)
He went above and beyond to make sure we had it is as easy as possible while

site seeing. He is the GOAT!

Most of us were wondering if he would ever join the church.

Because of his position in his tribe, this will never happen.
He is Muslim, and with the risk of his life, he cannot change religions.
(We were warned to NEVER talk about religion to non-members. Noted!).
But would aways say "I believe like you believe".
For a Muslim to vocalize that he believes in our Savior Jesus Christ is astounding!

He teaches his tribe values.
He has mostly eliminated smoking in his tribe.

Which is HUGE.

Smoking is rampant in Israel.
We would see 6 year olds smoking while driving down the streets.
It's kind of heartbreaking.

His accent was thick.
John did most of the talking.
When Machmoud was on the microphone,
we really had to pay attention to what he was saying!

Next is John Hilton111!

Instantly we knew John was going to be an exceptional guide.
He had his son Levi with him who just returned home from his mission.

John is a professor at BYU and is an expert in ancient scripture.

He taught for a year at the Jerusalem center and has written many books.

Considering the Cross is pretty well known.

He also has a podcast called "Seeking Jesus".
He is a wealth of knowledge!!

He had led a tour the week before us, so we were his second
and last group before going home.

What a fun side gig to travel for work!

John is my kind of tour guide.

Right off the bat he laid down the law that
he waits on nobody! (kidding, but not kidding)

If you are given a time to be back on the bus you

better be there or you will get left behind and you can call a taxi.

He then shared that he once left his own wife, so we knew he meant it!!
In all honesty I appreciated his "don't be late" policy.

It was nice not wasting precious time for people lollygagging.
We were on and off in 1 minute flat!

I heard the other bus would take close to 15 minutes to just get off, woof.
We quickly got acclimated to his pace and were grateful for it.
In fact, one morning the whole bus was loaded early and waiting on HIM!

It was awesome.
It became a joke with the group.

"You have all the time you need, but the bus leaves in 9 minutes." Ha!

Because of this, we got extra bonus stops.

We ended up going to over 50 locations!
(Machmoud said John does twice as many stops as other guides).

The pace was WILD and FURIOUS and not for the weak, lol!
Each day we calculated over 14,000 steps.

And I'm talking Israel steps, not Disneyland steps.
This was a trip, not a vacation.

We were on the bus by 7am, if not earlier, and going, going, going until dinner.

Add a 10 hour time difference and that is enough to push people over their limits!
I am not a morning person, but I never struggled to wake up.

I was pleasantly surprised I never crashed, I guess I never had time to, ha!

There were 50 in our group, with a variety of ages.
A newly-wed couple, to a few couples our ages, to mostly empty nesters,
to an 80 year old women.

Bless her.

She took a few tumbles.
One being into a water fountain at a Cathedral!
I felt so bad, but she was the cutest.

Israel was a bucket list item for her and props for making it happen!
John announced that the bus isn't like the pews at church.

Just because you sat there once doesn't mean you stake claim.

I loved that every day you sat by somebody new and really got to know them.

Early on during the trip did we realize that not all tours are created equal.

Even with the same tour company.
Not to say other tours are bad.

It's hard to explain. But John took care of the details.
Many times he would say "don't tell the other group..."

In fact I have a friend who went to Israel a month before we did.

After we returned and heard how much we LOVED it, she said- oh good,

I wasn't going to tell you but our tour guide was terrible.

It really affected their experience.
I totally agreed with her.

We were so darn fortunate for our experience!

Machmoud and John!

Our first day John said we had 4 main stops.

Joppa or Old Jaffa.
A quick 5 minutes down the coast.

We talked about Jonah 1-4

"Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and

went down to Joppa".

Crazy to imagine this general area was the harbor with boats

that Jonah would get on trying to escape Gods errand!

At the Statue of Faith lookout.
You can see the coastline of where we were staying the night before.

We also compared Jonah's story to Mark 4.

We learned that Jonah points us to Jesus.
John wanted us to know that his intentions on this
tour is that everything will always point to Jesus.

Scenery on the way to our next stop.
John mentioned to stay close together as this was not a place you would want to

be left wandering alone. Yikes!

John teaching us about The House of Simon the Tanner in Acts 10.
Simon hosted Peter during his travel to Israel.
Peter performed a miracle by the resurrection of a woman, Tabitha.
This miracle greatly increased the number of newly founded Christianity.
Peter also had the dream about clean and unclean animals.
He agreed to spread Christianity not only to the Jews,
but among the Pagan Romans (we learned more about them later on in the week).
Which was a big turning point transforming it into a universal religion.

He told us this was for sure not the actual spot of Simons house.
As is most of the Holy sites in Israel.

It is almost impossible to know exactly where most events actually took place.
John always reiterated that it doesn't matter if the event took place where it is commemorated.

The point is to grow to love the scripture stories even more.
To remember the events and really seek, ask and contemplate
the stories in our scriptures for ourselves.

We stopped inside St. Peter's Church on our way back to the bus.
I thought this was neat.

It sits on a hill near the shore.

The building dominated the view of Jaffa from the sea, thus serving as

a beacon signaling the Holy Land is near!

Stephanie and her thing for confessionals:)

Stop #2, Caesarea

Before we got started on our first day, John told us that

we will encounter times where we thought a particular site would move us to pieces,

but ended up not being what we thought it would be.
But that we would surprise ourselves with some stops that

we would fall in love with unexpectedly.
Most of the time not even having it on our radar.

This was the case for me and Caesarea.

The moment I got off the bus and got a glimpse of the sparkling turquoise ocean,

and the warm, salty scent of the water hitting me hard in the face, I was in love with this site.

Words cannot describe its beauty.
No wonder Herod chose to build his palace here!

We gathered in this first century Roman theater for our only group picture.
Bummer you can't see faces very well.

We blame John, haha. He took the picture.

The ruins of the city Caesarea are pretty neat!

John talked about Acts 12, the spot where Paul very likely defended himself before

being sent to Rome in Acts 26.

Things were not going well but the word of God still grew and multiplied, Acts 23-26.

He then told us that our next stop was closing early
that day and it was a pretty important one.
We would be cutting it close to making it by minutes.

Unfortunately we couldn't stay long, but it was enough for me

to fall deeper in love with this ancient city with a view!

So tempted to just jump in fully clothed!!

I was like Moana, that ocean was calling my name.

I had to at least touch it.

To the right is called the Hippodrome.

Thrilling horse and chariot races went down here 2,000 years ago!

The floor was solid sea shells!

You better believe I have a nice collection at home straight from Caesarea.

The water hitting the side and bursting into the air.

How gorgeous is the sky and water?!

Tons more of ruins we didn't get to see behind those arches, hmph.

It is ok, because with Machmouds driving and ability to perform

basically magic, we made it by the skin of our teeth to our next stop!

#3 Mt. Carmel

We hauled booty off the bus and ran through the entrance gate before it shut, phew!

It was still pretty busy up on top, but John found a quaint place to

gather to discuss some scriptures before going up to the lookout point.

I love that at every stop there seemed to be alters or chapels galore

for people to worship and teach from.

I liked this one with the charming cross.

Josh in the background was also a nice touch:)

(He reminded me SO much of my brother Christopher, it was crazy!).

1 Kings brings a whole new meaning to me.

We talked about the battle between Elijah and the false priests of Baal.

Something that stood out to me is that when we hear the word battle
(especially in the scriptures) we typically think of wars and physical fitting.

This was a battle of prayer.

Of course we know that Elijah would be the one to win this battle.

However, Elijah still found himself feeling tired and discouraged.
John pointed out that just because something goes incredibly well, doesn't mean
your life will continue to feel comfortable or perfect.

Life has its up and downs.
How many times do we get tired with our own personal things?
Prayer battles ensue, and we live on the faith that God will pour down the
rain of fire on our behalf.

Elijah sat under a Juniper tree to rest where an angel brought him cake.

A sign from God. That He sees you.

Never give up.

God is merciful.

We went up to see the sweeping views of the Jezreel Valley.

Which is chock full of biblical significance.

Lori and Todd Tucker.

Our friends from Mesa!

I felt like an influencer in the wild trying to get all the scenic shots!
The cactus reminded me of home.

Notice the dagger in Elijah's hand?

Spoiler alert, he ends up killing the prophets of Baal.

Lunch time!

The best thing about having John was that he led and guided us

every second of every day.

Even to food:)

Some days there were more options than others.
This day there was one place to eat.

And that included the other 100 tour buses out there.

Leave it to Machmoud to hurry us along before the lunch rush hit.

We hopped in line first once again to a buffet of all things Israel!

Terrible pictures, but it was good!

Casey noticed their tricky marketing.
It says energy in place of calories!

We got another bonus stop to Mount Arbel.
I love that even when standing in a remarkable holy site, Casey

gets drawn straight to the construction equipment, ha!

Checking out the {sweet} massive jackhammer.

I think he was missing work at this point!

This is a spectacular overlook of the Sea of Galilee (our first glimpse of it).
John pointed and mapped locations we would eventually visit,

but it helped us visualize exactly where everything is.

We talked about Matthew 28: 16-20
"Then the 11 disciples went into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus appointed them.
Go forth and therefore teach all nations."

Jesus commissioned his disciples to go and preach to the world and

promised "I am with you always" on this mount.

This was our first time singing.

I am not a huge singer, but it easily turned into one of my
favorite things we did together.

Go Forth with Faith was a very fitting song.

Machmoud pointing out Mount Hermon and the Golan Heights.

We drove to our new hotel home for the next 3 days.

The Magdala.

And now easily ranked as my favorite hotel of all!

This hotel was a stroke of awesome luck.

We originally were not reserved to stay here.

John begged for Bountiful Travel to use this hotel but said they didn't

think people would want to pay the extra $200/night.

With his persistence, right after covid he had them check just to see if

it would be a possibility.

Wouldn't you know it, only the week of our tour room rates had dropped to a low rate.
In fact Johns group the week before us didn't get to stay here,
the other tour bus was in a hotel in Nazareth.

See, all tours are not created equal.

John is the GOAT.

Its in the recently discovered first century town of Magdala.
Mary Magdalene's home town.

It sits RIGHT on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

This tops ocean front ninefold!

We got our bags off the buses and had 30 minutes to settle in our rooms
until it was time to explore some more!

I loved the style of the hotel.
Modern with a flare of "old city".

Everything was pristine and felt more like a fancy resort.

This was the back view.

If you follow the fountain pools it takes you straight to the Sea Of Galilee.

Our room is on the far left bottom.

A short 1 minute walk until you reached the Sea of Galilee!

Always a baptism happening!

Oh, it also happened to be our 19th wedding anniversary that day!

He still floats my boat!

We walked back up to the hotel to see
the archaeological park right next to it.

While during construction of the hotel they unearthed one of the 7 known

first century synagogues, and best preserved at that!

Mark 1:39

"And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee".

It is very likely that Jesus taught here since he spent the majority of his

ministry in Galilee.

These mosaic floors are astounding.
From coins found, they date back to Herodian period.

They also believe it was likely that the Torah scrolls were stored here.

The windows behind the synagogue are part of our hotel lobby!

The unique Magdala Stone that was uncovered.

On top is the Magdala symbol and newly adopted logo.
(It was everywhere in the city of Magdala and in the hotel).

A six petalled rosette, with six more petal encircling it.

Many theories have evolved over what it signifies.

One popular theory is the number 12 has religious significance.

It corresponds to plenitude and completeness in Judaic cultures.

Also 12 loaves of offering were placed on a table in the Temple each day.
There are the 12 tribes of Israel.
In Christian tradition there are 12 apostles.

The rosette was the most popular motif in Jewish art
of the Late Second Temple period.
It is also a symbol of the veil before the Holy of the Holies in the temple.

Experts say this is the most significant
archaeological discovery in the past 50 years.

There was also a visitor center type of place
on the grounds called Duc In Altum.

It provides a place of prayer, teaching and worship.

It strongly honors women of the Bible and all women of faith.

In this encounter room was first century market
stone floors and a magnificent painting.

We discussed Mark 5: 25-34.

This painting is of the woman with the
issue of blood touching the hem of Jesus.

You would look at this portrait and think the focus is about the feet.

It's not.
The focus is of the outreached hand.
The hand of a woman filled with incredible faith.
She did not rely on herself but rather on Christ.
Nobody else could fix her ongoing condition.

She knew if she could just touch him, she would be healed.
Mark 5:34
"Your faith has healed you".

I also loved being reminded that through Jesus all things are made clean.

In the Jewish Law this lady was considered unclean due to her blood issue and anyone

she touches to be unclean as well.
Through Jesus, contamination of the world had no effect on Christ.
The woman did not make Jesus unclean by her touching Him.
He made her clean.

So powerful!!

It always points back to Jesus.

There were chapel in the Duc In Altum.

This was the main boat chapel.

I could go to church here with the Sea of Galilee as its backdrop!

The atrium is dedicated to the women of Christ.
There are 8 marble columns with the names of 7 women who were followers

of Christ. The 8th unmarked column honors women of faith across time up to our time.

John had all the women in the group pose in front of the 8th pillar.

Another picture of the Magdala hotel with synagogue in front and the hotel in the back.
The Sea of Galilee directly to the right if it would fit in the picture

Can you see why staying here was such a big deal?!!