Israel, The Holy Land - Part 1

We arrived in ISRAEL February 23rd. We flew into Tel Aviv and spend a night at the most beautiful beach I have ever walked on. Teenagers from all over the world come to this beach for spring break supposedly... and when I walked through the area, I knew why. :) We enjoyed hanging out in a beach town for a night.
Below is one of the guys from Faulkner, Luke, playing soccer on the beach of Tel Aviv with some men from Israel. Luke plays soccer for Faulkner so this was a really cool experience for him. Afterwards he said to our group, "They didn't speak any English, soccer is just a common language." :) SO COOL.

Neysa and I standing by the ruins of Herod the Great's palace in Caesarea

Katie and I standing in front of ruins of the pool Herod had built in front of his palace
Below is the aqueduct that brought fresh water to Caesarea from the time of Herod.

Below is the 8th century B.C. Water way of Hezekiah

Below is me standing right outside of the water way after we walked through it from the other side. This was where the water was coming from that brought it to Hezekiah in the Bible -- obviously, notice the pretty flowers!

This is looking from up top the mount of the beatitudes from matthew 5,6, and 7:

This is a cathedral built on top of the mount.... the catholics build cathedrals on top of anything significant to them from the Bible.... so sadly we aren't able to see things as they were really at all. However, it was amazing to be at this place where Jesus probably was when he did the sermon of the mount. :)

This is the boat in a museum that was found in the sea of Galilee and it is dated back to the time of Jesus and the apostles.

This is what the boat looked like that our group got to go on to ride around on the sea of Galille:)

Faulkner group on the Sea of Galilee:

Standing in the Sea of Galilee! :)

This is the building on top of the place where Jesus fed the 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish:

Cape Sounion

On February 18th, our group drove out to Cape Sounion which is the site of ruins of the ancient greek temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea according to mythology. The point goes out into the water of the same seas that Paul would have traveled through when visiting Greece.

We arrived just in time to watch the entire sunset. We enjoyed watching God paint the sky and sea beautiful, gorgeous colors. It was by far the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed in my life. God is so powerful and wonderful. Thinking back on being there at Sounion so many thoughts come to mind. First off, that temple for a mythological god is ruined. It's broken and slowly falling apart every day. But the true God's temple, us, will never die. We are eternal, spiritual beings. I think I'll stick with a God whose temple will never ruin, instead of myths. Then while I was out there I looked at the temple and sure, it was cool... but I noticed that the hundreds of people there to see the temple were not looking at the temple, they had their backs to the temple facing the sea and sky -- God's creation. It was like God saying, "Yeah that 'god' may have a pretty temple made by the hands of men by turn around and look at the seas and sky of the setting sun that I created." -- NO comparison between God's true creation (the universe all together) and the material things made by God's creation (us). Sometimes God just does things just to impress me even more with his creation. These pictures honestly do not give it justice. I say you visit this yourself and witness some more of the incredible, breathtaking art of our almighty King and Father.