The experience of a lifetime happened this week!

This has been a pretty interesting week. We finished classes for the semester. We just have 2 days of field trip going to the places of Jesus’ last week. They are tomorrow and Tuesday.

Sandy Autry and her sister Lori arrived on Thursday night. We got to go to the Western Wall to welcome in the Sabbath with the students. They had a wonderful time and they definitely have “shiny eyes” that make them stand out in a crowd.

On the weekend we had District Conference. Elder Rasband (Senior President of Seventy) and Elder Price (Area Authority) came. We had a new District Presidency called. It’s David Whitchurch, who is the Academic Associate Director here at the center. His life was already busy. I guess it just got more so!

Our field trip last week took us down to the Dead Sea: Qumran, Masada, En Gedi, and swimming in the Dead Sea—not that I went swimming. We had the clearest conditions—the best I had ever experienced.

This Picture shows the Dead Sea out of the bus. You can see all of the way to Jordan! It was gorgeous! The Dead Sea at 1300 feet below sea level is usually hot, so it was nice for the girls to cool their feet in a pool at En Gedi. This was the place where David was hiding from Saul and had the opportunity to kill him, but refused because Saul was the “Lord’s anointed.”

The Falls here are beautiful. We didn’t go all of the way up because we were too exhausted!

But the most exciting this week was that a group of us were guests of the WAQF (which controls the haram es-Shariff where the Dome of the Rock is) and were taken on a tour of the al-Aksa mosque and the Dome of the Rock!!!!!!! We got to go inside both of them. I didn’t think that would be possible because non-Muslims are rarely allowed in there any more!

                                                                                   Me in the Mosque.

These pictures are in the Dome of the Rock. Both buildings are going through renovations at the moment, but they are still gorgeous buildings!