Shalom!

Last week, there was a lot going on, including a day trip after church to Gezer and Gath (to make up for not being able to visit them in previous field trips), an over night camping trip at Mareshet Gath in order to explore the caves tunneled there in the Bar Kokhva rebellion of 135 AD. Unfortunately my camera bag strap was broken that night (thanks to Paul DeGoes for fixing it!), so I didn't get pictures like I promised, but if you click on the link that I have (in the right margin of my blog) for Ryan's blog, he has posted a few pics of that trip.

The bulk of this last week has been our Land and the Bible trip to the Negev, which lasted from Tuesday morning to Friday evening. The Negev is the southern portion of the land of Israel, and much of it is considered as desert. It was mostly in the Negev that the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) lived. It was in the Negev (the Wilderness of Paran) where the Israelites "wandered" for forty years after listening to the ten unfaithful spies at Kadesh Barnea and not believing God's promise that he would give them the Promised Land. At the very southern edge of the Negev is Elat and Ezion-geber, Israel (and Jordan)'s port to the Red Sea, which held great importance in relation to the trade routes in the time of ancient Israel, and where Solomon had Hiram, king of Tyre build him a fleet of ships. It is also in the Negev where Qumran is located (on the edge of the Dead Sea), where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1948, dating over 1000 years older than our oldest manuscripts of the Bible at the time, whose accuracy gave us great reason to trust the reliability of the Scriptures we have now.

However, in order to assure that we aren't wasting such trips, the profs don't exactly make the classes to be overwhelmingly easy. In addition, this week I'm in the middle of "Friends and Family" week, and I want to devote as much time to my parents and oldest brother Matt as possible over this week. Thus, this blog cannot be a tome, but hopefully the pictures will speak many words that I can't right now.

As amazing as this last week was, one thing that I am learning and relearning throughout this semester is something that one of my very good friends back at TMC reminded me of in an e-mail, "People are more important than places". Actually, people are more important than a lot of things (including blogs?), and although one should be carefully in quickly drawing a false dichotomy between people and other things, I'm realizing the danger in putting things to see or do in my agenda before others. Lord, help me to assess my priorities and then reorder them in a way that is pleasing to You!


Katie and Eton (sp? His name is pronounced A-tawn), who is Bill's youngest, and definitely has a corner on the market of cuteness!


A cool hike in what's called the "Red Canyon".


Roommates!


"The Little Girls", Melyndee Butterfield, Heather Donckels, and Heather Zorichak. They're the three shortest girls at IBEX, are all rooming together, and just "happened" to wear the same colors on this day...


Proof! That weird object I found in the desert more than a month ago was indeed a porcupine quill. Isn't he cute?


The Dead Sea from the top of Masada, which some of us hiked really early to see the sunrise. A little disappointing because of the clouds, but beautiful all the same.


Roommates! (Again)


Paul DeGoes and Jeremy Phelps in front of "Cave 1" at Qumran, where the first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Not a lot of tourists go here folks, IBEX has the inside scoop (and we're willing to hike nasty stuff to get places).