A Home Visit

Daniel in the Bethlehem Bible College gift shop invited the group over to his home last night.  At least, that's where we thought we were going.  He and his brother Paul and a couple others collected us at the hotel and walked us to a restaurant for a middle eastern dessert that Kristen, Karen, Liz and Jewel compared to "mozzarella sticks dipped in syrup."  It had a goat cheese base with a topping of a consistency similar to cornbread with honey on it.  Not sure exactly what it was, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Daniel's "home" was actually a room in a youth hostel where we found some instruments and space to spread out and sing and worship before the Lord.  We spent some time in rocking worship before Paul decided to teach us an Arabic dance.  I can't say that we look any more Arabic when dancing like he did, especially when the music sounded like, umm, techno Arabian 80s bull-fighting polka music?  Definitely an international flare to the music, whatever it was! We ended the time with some heartfelt prayer for the ministries they're involved in, the pilgrims who come to Bethlehem, and the town in general. 

A highlight of the evening was climbing to the roof of the building, which was on a hill, to overlook Bethlehem at night.  We could see a wedding dance going on in a courtyard at the bottom of the hill and learned that women and men dance separately at middle eastern weddings. After getting our fill of the Egyptian music wafting up the hill toward us, we headed back to the hotel. Bethlehem IS a rather quiet town at night.

The neon Internet sign (top left) didn't seem to attract a whole lot of people.