Woah, what a whirlwind the past week and a half has been.
From the Blue Mosque and Grand Bazaar to dancing in a local restaurant with our new friends, we topped off our Holy Land adventure with a full day of exploring the beautiful city of Istanbul. The highlight of the day was visiting the Hagia Sophia.
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If you have ever gone on a vacation or trip you know the barrage of questions that accompany your return. The usual questions like, ‘how was it’ or ‘what was your favorite place’, maybe even a ‘tell me everything’. However eager I am to share the blessing that this trip has been, I’ve found myself at a loss of words to adequately describe the experience.
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We spent our last day in Israel visiting the sites that are pillars of our Christian faith. Some of us mentioned that we came on the trip to experience what we saw today. The highlight of our morning journey was visiting Bethlehem and seeing where Jesus would have been born at the Church of the Nativity. We then drove back to Jerusalem and spent the afternoon visiting all of our sites on foot.
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It’s within these beautiful, indescribable moments that the black and white text in my Bible is finally in color. These moments bring an overflow of emotions and feeling of God’s love each time, but they don’t stop there.
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Day five of our Israel trip began with a quick devotional on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Rich spoke about the time…
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Wow. I cannot believe we have already completed day four of our trip to Israel. Time is flying by, yet just yesterday feels like ages ago. Each day I wonder, “Wow, tomorrow cannot top that…” but it always does.
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“Shalom Shalom!” as one of our tour guides Ronen would say. And so, after a few days of travel, Heartland Camp’s 2019 trip to Israel has begun. Let me start out by introducing our travelers!
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I'm currently sitting in the Adventure House back at camp, reflecting some about the experience in Israel. While I was excited to go, I was a little nervous about what the trip would be like, for the simple fact that this would be my second time visiting the Land of the Bible. I was nervous because while the trip (in details) was pretty similar to my last one, the purpose and group were completely different. I had the opportunity to study-abroad in Israel last time I went, and the group I was with then was (mostly, with the few exceptions of some older professors) around my age. This time, we had a group that varied greatly in age, and had groups from a few different states (and even a couple from Canada), join together to make the group we traveled with. I was nervous, just because I didn't know what to expect from the group we were joining up with.
Overall though, I greatly enjoyed this trip. It was cool connecting with new people and journeying through the Holy Land with them. A question I expected to be asked upon arriving back (and I've already gotten it once) is one I don't have much of an answer to, because honestly I'm still processing, but I can provide an answer that satisfies the intent of the question, what differences were there between this trip and your last one? Here's my answer: The perspective of the tour guide is the biggest difference.
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There are times working at a summer camp where it seems like everything is happening at once. That a million things need my attention. So you focus on what is right in front of you an go and go and go until it is 11:30 and you have run out of Cheez-Its (which is the fuel that leadership staff runs on). It is at then end of days like that when Michael or Emma would ask me how I am doing and the only response is; “I have seen some things”.
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Before I share with you some of the recent adventures we got to experience in Israel, I think it is necessary for me to give a bit of background context that helps set up where the perspective of this experience I'm about to share with you comes from. Like many experiences, I entered this trip with one main expectation: In some way, God would speak.
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The very first leg of Heartland's travels to Israel. We have arrived safely and though we are definetly tired, we can't wait to see how God will move on this trip!
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We left Jerusalem at about 4:45am on Friday morning and drove up to Tel Aviv for our flight to Istanbul. For the record- waking up at 4am to drive at 4:45 is not the best morning ever but honestly, I think most of us were ready to be home by that point. We were all pretty exhausted from going 100mph for so many days.
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Our trip has come to an end, and what an awesome way to spend it. We got to sleep in a little today for our journey through Israel. We started at the Mt. of Olives, one of the best views in Israel. This spot overlooks all of Jeruselam. They warned us that we had a long day ahead of us and proceed to point out into Jureslem pointing out all of the checkpoints we would have along the way. Needless to say, we had a lot of ground to cover.
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It had me thinking- how am I a stumbling block in other peoples lives? How do I cause others to sin and how can I prevent that?
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Today was our first day in Jerusalem and I got to experience more than I expected. We visited the Temple Mount and Bethlehem and learned a lot along the way.
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We made it to Jerusalem! We're already on the last section of our time in the Holy Land--it's gone by fast.
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The scripture we read was Mark 2:1-12 and there are many lessons that can be learned from this but what God showed me today was a powerful example of a friendship that was faithful, enduring, and loving.
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