JERUSALEM!!

As our men are about to head home, I wanted to catch you up on the last couple of days.  Everyone was excited to make it to Jerusalem.  It's kind of like the excitement you feel when you finally reach the Good News of the New Testament!

Jerusalem has so many amazing places to experience Jesus.  Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the truly awesome places to feel Jesus and imagine what he went through in His final days.

The church itself is difficult to describe.  It is a huge, rambling structure where all different religious sects have portions to maintain.  It is built upon the places Jesus was crucified, laid and prepared for burial and the actual place thought to have been where the tomb was.  There are secret passageways and catacombs and caves and so much history. 

In the pictures above, the first one is a gazebo type altar that sits atop the tomb.  Visitors line up to go in, kneel down and pray.  The picture after the map is where Golgotha was.  Visitors climb these steep marble steps to get there, then crouch down on their knees to feel through a hole to touch the actual dirt of the place Jesus died. The next picture must be a special holy day service.  Our group went at 6 am!  So they definitely avoided the crowds.

And lastly is my favorite thing in all of Jerusalem.  It is a massive mosaic, above a marble slab where Jesus was prepared for burial. The slab itself smells sweet because pilgrims from all over the world have come here to pray and pour fragrant oils on this sacred spot, as they would have done for Jesus.  There are usually several nuns positioned here to pray.

And the mosaic is simply beautiful, as well as, moving. It depicts the three things that were supposed to have happened in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There are angels above Jesus who are weeping, wiping their tears with their sleeves.  There are other crying angels that have little white tissues. Even the angels were crying.