The World as it is Today

Social Media is in every hand every day. We can sit back and scan through it OR we can be active and alive on social media. 

I am a scanner. Seeing my peers constantly post about meaningless information causes me to shy away, sit back and not care too much about what is on social media. 

We can be effective though. Our laziness shows when we decide to not act. 

Elder Bednar speaks of being active in his talk, "To Sweep the Earth as with a Flood." 

We know that apostles of the Lord, Jesus Christ, who are constantly consumed with many tasks, concerns, questions, challenges, paperwork etc still have found the desire passion and time to share their love through social media accounts. 

Brigham Young, a prophet of God, said, "Every discovery in a science and art, that is really true and useful to mankind has been given by direct revelation from God, through but few acknowledge it. It has been given with a view to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of truth, and the redemption of the earth from the power of sing and Satan. We should take advantage of all these great discoveries, the accumulated wisdom of ages, and give toy our children the benefit of every branch of useful knowledge, to prepare them to step forward and efficiently do their part in the great work" (Discourse of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widstoe [1954], 18-19).

The Future is ONLY as bright as your faith.

 

The Garden of Gethsemane on the Sabbath. 

The Church of Mary Magdalene. (aka the Golden Onion church on the Gethsemane Hill)

In En Karem: the city where John the baptist was born, we went to the Church of the Visitation. This is where Mary and Elisabeth (Mary's cousin) first met. When Elisabeth met Mary, Elisabeth asked why have you come to me, her response was the glorious hymn of praise, the Magnificat. (above picture)

This is the traditional site where John the Baptist was born. 

Just having some fun with the camera. This was actually taken right before we heard the sirens go off and the missiles hit.

 

This is the traditional site where the cross was placed for Christ.

 

So we had this little thing at the JC called JC PROM!

Yes indeed this is true. We started off with the traditional Spirit Week. Thursday was twin day as you can see with Jaque and I. The week even ended with a dance. We all had dates who asked us in creative ways anywhere from Singing Phantom of the Opera to chocolate syrup on a dinner tray. Now most us (aside from those who are engaged) had a 2 or 3 girls to dance with for the night. We got picked up at our door, pinned the boutonniere on, (picture below) and headed off to dinner. Following dinner we took pictures in the gym, crowned the royalty and danced the night away.

Thank you to Mackenzie Pay and many others for the idea and for all their hard work.

It was quite the eventful day considering we survived the bomb and prom all in one night.

 

Just had to add a funny picture in here. See the playground, now look left...see the old man sitting on a coach...wish that was me on that couch was at all those playgrounds I sat at over the summer.

Look unto him in EVERY thought, doubt not, fear not.

The Shuk: the typical shopping place for the Jewish family groceries. They have the best dried fruit, pomegranates, and any other fruit you can imagine. 

Davidson Archeological Museum: The Western Wall is just to the left in this picture to help with direction, and the center is straight ahead through the city. One thing that stuck out to me here is how you can see the massive boulders (weighing a few tons) were pushed off the wall and crushed through the city sidewalks as they were dismantling the temple.

These are the steps that exit the temple grounds. The original gate where you would exit the temple is just behind me. It is now sealed with stone, but it was open many years ago. The best part about this, is that this is where Christ would have walked as he left the temple. 

These are the three gates where Christ would have entered.  One of my friends mentioned how its interesting how other churches build huge temples to commemorate where significant events happened. And yet we just sit and ponder on some simple steps that Christ's feet would have walked on.

Just some cute little Jewish children  runnin around. We spent one whole day in the Jewish Quarter in the Old City and it was incredible. Interesting how the Old City is not just shops and churches but much more. We saw tons of homes, kids playing soccer in a courtyard area, restaurants, schools, daycare's, hair salons...everything you would find in a little town.

The great thing about being outside is that you get to see all the wonderful things God has created, instead of houses or buildings that man has created. Check out the clouds and the sun workin magic together in the sky. 

This is inside one of the churches we went on our Christian Quarter day. We were able to listen in on a mass here when we entered. Neat experience. The typical view of a church from the outside is what you see in the above picture....however it is nothing like what you see on the inside as you notice in this picture. Shows you not judge a book by its cover.

Bethlehem Field Trip: this is shepherds field

View of Bethlehem from Shepherds Field

Just some fun with the city's night lights!

Olive Picking: Black olives produce more oil but less quality, Green olives produce less oil but higher qaulity FYI.

A great friend of mine here, Neil Reed had a brilliant idea to bury Brother Judd's daughter Amanda in the Olives.

Neil and I just pickin away.

The sunsets we can never get away from here.

We took a tour of the Western Wall underground. A very small portion of the Western Wall (as seen below) is only visible today. Most of it is now covered up by Muslim homes who built their houses up against the wall as close to the temple as they could. This picture shows the one spot underground that is closest to the temple mount where we see Jewish woman praying.

Western Wall at night. This place changes in sight and in feeling every time I see it.

Playing the YMCA bells! The Squires here allow the students to come play the tower bells for 300,000 people to here. Mikele and I were able to play a couple songs for the city. No big deal. (The bells are above us, so when we push down on the handles, the cords going up to the ceiling pull and ring the bells.

Classy West Jerusalem - Adri, this is the new addition of the light rail down this road.

Just one small piece of Herod's many palaces. This is a pool here, complete with an island in the middle. Behind me is the Herodian, where Herod is buried in his palace. 

Every Member is a Missionary Club

Happy Halloween! To get in spirit with the recent news of the church Mikele Stephenson and I decided to dress up as Sister Missionaries! Name tags, Preach my Gospel and clunky black shoes what more is needed. But in all seriousness....this girl to the right of me actually has her papers in as of a week ago, along with three other girls here at the JC! Craziness. Her call should be coming to the US soon and she is hoping to get it expedited to the JC to open it! So stoked for this girl who I will miss as a companion when she heads off to serve the Lord.

Machaerus...the view was stunning here. You can't see much past the brown mountains in the picture, but with the naked eye you could just barely see the Dead sea. This is where John the Baptist was put into Prison and then beheaded by Herod.



PETRA!!!! I don't know how you guys feel about Petra, but I could live there and be satisfied for life. This is me standing at a view point of most of Petra. The Monastery (which is much much better than the treasury to be completely honest) is just behind me. For those who don't know, Petra is home to the Nabateans. This is where a lot of the royalty was buried. I.E. the 'Monastery' behind me is really just a tomb, but looks like a monastery from the outside. You can see how deep they carved in to the side of the mountain there. Below is a close up of the door of the Monastery. Sitting to the left of me is a girl named Katie who we were able to talk to for a bit and she even sang a few primary hymns with us. 

Above - in Amman (the capital of Jordan) we stopped by a crepe place that had the second best crepes (first being my mothers).  The bucket of Nutella I am holding is 5 Kilo's and they mentioned they go through about 2 of those per day....sick.

The Running Club! Still strong at it no matter where you take us. This is running in Amman. Our dear friend Haley is taking the picture for us here.

Hercules! This is at the Citadel in Amman. This hand (and an elbow behind us) is all that remains of the Hercules statue.

This is at the Jabbok River where Jacob wrestled w/ an angel.

Its PITA time! For lunch we had fresh pita and more fresh pita. Since we couldn't eat any fresh produce in Jordan, when there was something good we filled up on it. Do you see the size of these things though. Massive.

Balm of Gilead...refer to Hymn 140 the last verse and few other scriptures. This was in Jerash or aka Jershon.

Grandpa if you ever check my blog out this one is for you. We went to King Hussain's car collection museum. Pretty ridiculous cars there.

If you notice in the upper LH corner there is a picture of the current Jordanian King, Abdullah II. It was incredible to me to see his picture in every store, on every corner, on every building. What great love and respect the Jordanians have for their king.

This is overlooking the Jordan river at Bethany beyond Jordan where Jesus Christ was baptized by John. We had a wonderful devotional here talking about standing in the water and looking to the temple. Making those covenants of baptism to be able to enter into the temple and make further covenants.

"If we are to become like him, we must freely forgive others as he has forgiven us…." Spencer J Condie

 This past Monday we went on a Field Trip to Neot Kedumim. It is a biblical reserve place where we learned about all sorts of stuff about life in biblical times. We got to herd sheep, crush zatar (below) for our pita's.....

 ....meet a torah scribe and learn about the logistics and tremendous time it takes to write, and also the great honor it is to be a torah scribe. (btw these scrolls above are 200yrs old).....

 ....we were also able to crush and press olives....

It was incredible to match the symbolism with the process of making olive oil. We will get to pick olives and make olive oil at the center in the next couple weeks!!!(also that's Kathryn Lindsey pushing with me in this pic)






For those of you who know about the shekel shack here at the JC....this is our portable shekel shack. These guys are pretty incredible and have taken the shekel shack to the next level for sure. Not only are they portable on field trips and group adventures outside the center, they also deliver your order if you just give them a call, they have created a "gold membership" system, and so many more things you can not even believe. Gotta love these guys.

Sorry this one is again for those who have been here. This is Ayman, the Arabic teacher. I have never met someone so funny, or with such a big heart. He is so great! (and that's an understatement)