WE’RE GOING TO ISRAEL!!! Yes! The Heartland Interns are going to the Holy Land. As part of our Cornerstone experience, the eight interns (and our fearless leader, program director Jared Briscoe) get to take an educational trip to the land of Christ, to see where He lived, ministered, died, and was resurrected! I’m getting the unique opportunity to take a second trip to Israel, as I was also a part of the intern class last year. I’m really thankful that I get to experience it a second time, and I’m super excited to get to travel with this year’s interns and to see what the Lord has in store for me this time! I’m a believer that God always has something new to teach us, so I’m looking forward to finding out what that is.

On this adventure, we’ll spend about ten days traveling around the country of Israel, exploring and experiencing the land of the Bible. With travel time, we’ll be gone for fourteen days total. We’ll see God’s Word come alive in stories about Jesus, Samson, King David and many more! While we spend time at the Dead Sea, in Galilee, and in Jerusalem, each day will be filled with hiking, visiting Biblical sites, and studying Bible stories in the places that they happened! Some highlights will include the Jordan River, the Sea of Galilee, the Western Wall, and the Garden of Gethsemane. The choir nerd in me is super stoked to go back to St. Anne’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, which was designed with perfect acoustics for the sole purpose of singing praises to God! You can hear a whisper from across the room in that place!

We leave in just a couple days! Heartland will send us off on Saturday, March 25, when we’ll drive to Chicago. The next day, we’ll fly out of O’Hare to Istanbul and then to Tel Aviv, where we’ll start our trek through the Holy Land! Keep checking out our blog for daily trip updates and photos from your favorite interns ;)

A big part of preparing for our journey to the Holy Land has been fundraising! While Heartland pays for half of the expenses of the trip for each of us, it’s the responsibility of each intern to raise support for the other half. I’m happy to say that, as of Monday, March 13, all of us are fully funded! This fundraising process has been a big opportunity for God to show just how closely He works in our lives. Ask any of us interns, and we’ll be able to tell you a crazy story about how the Lord’s hand was involved in raising $2,300. Since I’m getting the unique opportunity to travel to Israel a second time, I had decided not to fundraise this year and pay my portion of the expenses out of my own pocket. Since then, I received a number of unsolicited gifts, some from people I know, but a lot from people I don’t! The Lord showed His face to me by providing half of my out-of-pocket expenses for the trip! For that blessing I’m SUPER thankful!

As we go on our journey, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers! We really appreciate your prayers that the Lord will show Himself to us while we’re in the Holy Land.

God’s peace,

Erin

Intern, Heartland Center