Continuation of the Easter Celebration

We're off on our Dead Sea field trip in a couple of hours. I only have 9 more days with Lana. I'm not ready for the students to leave! Final exams are this week.

This week continued the Easter celebrations. On Saturday there was the Holy Fire celebration at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I didn't go because of church and Lana was teaching Relief Society. But some of our students were able to get into the church. Reports were that there were 10,000 people in the church, which is insane to think about. They have a fire in the tombs (which we experienced earlier on our field trip this week). People take candles to light from the fire and then pass on the fire. Some of it is put in containers and rushed to the airport where it is flown all over the world! Picture #1 shows our students in the midst of all of the celebrations!

Picture #2 is Rayna, Sarah, Lauren and I at the Good Friday Via Dolorosa parade. We're just about to enter the church of the Holy Sepulcher courtyard. On our field trip to the Christian churches this week we were able to see parts of a Coptic Washing of the Feet ceremony. That was a fun experience. Especially as we were studying John 13 at the time. I taught part of our lesson at the Wohl Museum in front of a foot washing basin from the first century!

On our field trip to the Jewish Quarter we went to the excavations of the Burnt House. It was destroyed when the temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Picture #3 are pictures of a spear and a child's arm that were found in the excavation: a very sad reminder of the human tragedy of that time.