A bit early for Valentine's Day, but the team did seem to be telling each other of their love for one another all morning as we picked olives at East Jerusalem Baptist Church. Olive juice was definitely one of the common topics of discussion! We were joined by a Muslim woman, perhaps from the community, who labored alongside us. She didn't speak a lick of English and kept telling us important things in Arabic. Perhaps she was collecting some of the gleanings from the church's trees for her family, a la Deuteronomy 24:20?
Olives were a bit of a theme during the rest of the day as well as we walked to the Garden Tomb and the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane is a real garden at the base of the Mount of Olives and contains some olive trees which are 2000 years old. You can see the new shoots which come up outside the older trunks. The garden is well maintained and fenced off with a sidewalk around the perimeter. From Gethsemane, we walked back to old Jerusalem and walked the first part of the way along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross (more famously known for containing the 14 Stations of the Cross). We walked as far as the bus station, NOT to be confused with the 14. The bus station IS, however, in front of a site which our students found to be quite interesting - Golgotha. It was "discovered" just over 100 years ago when a Brit was in Israel trying to figure out exactly where certain biblical activities would have taken place. He looked up from his reading one day to see the outline of a skull in the rock face across from his accommodations. The skull-shaped cliff happened to be next to what once was a garden containing a tomb cut out of rock. "At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid" (Jn 19:41). This particular tomb has been used once... though as we saw today, it was empty. And that's the whole reason we are on this internship!!
Olives were a bit of a theme during the rest of the day as well as we walked to the Garden Tomb and the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane is a real garden at the base of the Mount of Olives and contains some olive trees which are 2000 years old. You can see the new shoots which come up outside the older trunks. The garden is well maintained and fenced off with a sidewalk around the perimeter. From Gethsemane, we walked back to old Jerusalem and walked the first part of the way along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross (more famously known for containing the 14 Stations of the Cross). We walked as far as the bus station, NOT to be confused with the 14. The bus station IS, however, in front of a site which our students found to be quite interesting - Golgotha. It was "discovered" just over 100 years ago when a Brit was in Israel trying to figure out exactly where certain biblical activities would have taken place. He looked up from his reading one day to see the outline of a skull in the rock face across from his accommodations. The skull-shaped cliff happened to be next to what once was a garden containing a tomb cut out of rock. "At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid" (Jn 19:41). This particular tomb has been used once... though as we saw today, it was empty. And that's the whole reason we are on this internship!!
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