A Day of Touring
Shalom!
We had an excellent day of touring in Israel. Unfortunately our performance for this evening was canceled due to the situation with the navel blockade around Gaza, so we were able see many cool things today with our extra time.
After waking up to a beautiful morning in Tel Aviv, we toured Independence hall where the nation was miraculously declared on May 14th, 1948. David Ben Gurion declared the state in what was then the Tel Aviv art museum, there are still works of art by many Jewish artists on display there today. It was incredible to see the place where the hand of God has moved so recently in the restoration of the state of Israel and the in gathering of the Jewish people to their ancestral home land!
Next we had the opportunity to visit and take a tour of David Ben Gurion's actual house in Tel Aviv. Most impressive are the 20,000 books in his personal library. This first prime minister of Israel constantly studied and spoke 11 languages! He retired from the government near the age of 70 and went to work at a desert kibbutz with his wife. His house in the desert contains another 5,000 books, his favorite being the Bible! What an incredible and driven man God used to declare Israel back into official existence!
After a quick lunch at our favorite bakery in Jaffa, Abulafia, we drove towards the north of Israel to see several things. First we went to Meggido. One of King Solomons fortified cities, this city dates back to before the Egyptians making it one of the earliest community establishments in the world. Some scholars think that Meggido and the valley named after it (Har Meggido or Armegeddon) has seen more battles than any other place on earth. And we were blessed to have Frosien, Ariena, Noam, and Asher Garaway join us as we toured this site. They recently just returned to Israel after living in Boulder for 2 years.
Our next stop was Mt. Carmel where we talked about the story of Elijah and his victory over the wicked king Ahab's prophets of Baal. We read out loud the entire chapter of 1 Kings 18 and then shared insights about what God did while sitting in the direct vicinity of where it actually happened!
Dinner tonight was in the Druze village of Daliyat Al Carmel, very very good food, and very kind people!
We are very excited that Lisa Wygant made it safely to us, and she met up with us in Tel Aviv this morning.
Tonight we are sleeping in Haifa, and tomorrow we will be doing 2 shows! We appreciate all of your prayers, please pray that we all will be completely over jet lag when we wake up in the morning, other than that, we are having a great time!
Again, Shalom!
posted by The Internationals @ 1:23 PM
