Galilee

I thought I wasn't going to be able to upload pictures on my blog anymore at the center, but I can. Yay!

We have been in Galilee for the last 11 days. It has been one of my favorite places so far. We stayed in little "beach houses" and I was sandy the entire 11 days, but it was worth it for literally a 30 second walk to the beach. We traveled to every possible place you can travel to in Galilee and studied the New Testament like crazy. I learned so much more about Christ's life in these last 11 days than I probably have in my whole life. I didn't realize that Christ spent so much time in the Galilee--even more than he did in Jerusalem.

The Sea of Galilee.

We went on a boatride across the lake and we got to stop the boat in the middle of the sea and have a devotional. We talked about the story of Christ walking on the water and Peter joining him (Matthew 14: 22-33) and when Christ rebuked the waves and said, "Peace Be Still" (Mark 4: 35-41). We also got to sing "Master, the Tempest is Raging", which has a totally different meaning to me now.
This boat is 2,000 years old--it dates back to the time that Christ would have walked the earth and sailed on the waters of Galilee with his disciples. Christ would have been asleep in a boat like this one when the apostles woke him to rebuke the tempest. We all wonder how he could be sleeping through something like that.

I ate this fish in Galilee.

And I didn't hate it. Surprising--especially since I'm the one who had to skin it and get the bones out. Plus I ate the tail. It tasted like a potato chip, but grosser.

The Jordan River.

This is where Christ was baptized (Matthew 3: 13-17), but we really don't know exactly where it happened. This was after church on sabbath, so we all looked nice. What this picture doesn't show is that we went river rafting on the Jordan two days prior to this.

Gamla.

Jesus Christ "preached in the synagogues of Galilee"( Luke 4:44), so we think that he might have preached in this synagogue in Gamla (this synagogue dates back to the first century AD, so he may have been in this exact one). Even if he didn't come to this synagogue, it is almost certain that the people who lived in this village of Gamla, whose ruined houses we were walking through, had heard of him. Pretty cool to think about.

The Synagogue in Capernaum.

Capernaum was one of my favorite places in Galilee. Christ spent most of the years of his ministry there. This synagogue was not built in Christ's time, but it is built on top of the foundation of the synagogue that Christ would have really taught in. Capernaum is also the place where the woman with the blood disease touched Christ's garment and was healed (Matthew 9:20-22), where he gave the sermon on the Bread of Life (John 6:22-71), where he raised Jarius' daughter from the dead (Mark 5: 35-43) and my favorite story: when the man with the palsy was lowered down into the house through the roof to be healed by Christ (Luke 5:17-26).

And we went to a million other places.

I loved our time in Galilee and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to go there and learn so much, but it was so nice to get back home to the center and sleep in a bed that wasn't full of sand. I loved hearing people call the Jerusalem Center "home". It really is like our home here.

We go home in less than three weeks. Whenever someone brings it up, we make them stop talking about it, because no one wants to leave this place.

We will always have a home in Jerusalem.