Jerusalem, the Old City

Tuesday June 12,2012  This is a black and white picture of the Tower of David

This morning, we were taken by someone here in Jerusalem, on a tour of the Old Jerusalem to show us the stones used in the buildings.  The guy is named Eric Gerbelsky.  He is the one who we came to see about the stone for the temple.  Instead of showing us buildings and telling us about their historical significance, he went around telling us how the stones tell stories.  And man, do they ever!

As Americans, we have it so good!  You forget sometimes that our country, is quite a young one.  This trip to Jerusalem has reminded me, not only how many privileges and wonderful conveniences   have we in America, like ice(who know we were so spoiled to have ice?), but also my testimony has been strengthened about Jesus Christ and his role as our savior and redeemer.  And surprisingly enough, I have also seen the confusion that Joseph Smith must have felt as every religion tells you something about what they believe, and quite convincingly, but you know that each one is contradicting the other, or just giving a different version of the same story.

This Gerbelsky guy, was quite animated.  He was so excited to show us his city and show us how his family has contributed to a legacy of stone work that has lasted through centuries.  In Jerusalem, they have many buildings and walls that tell the tales of being conquered and reconquered.  When there was a place of historical significance, like where they thought Jesus was born, or where they thought he was buried ( remember some religions do not believe he rose from the dead, so even though there is an empty mosalium, lines of people wait to get in to see where Jesus MAY have been put to rest) most of the time a church is built over that place of significance. What? A building built over a place where they think, or have heard Jesus laid after being crucified?  It reminds me of that game you can play where you whisper something in someones ear and they whisper that thing to the next person and so on down the line until the last person says what was told to them.  The information from the beginning is always different than what the person hears at the end.  That is what if seems like  here.  There was some truth in the beginning, but after being retold and retold, it gets warped and incorrect.  Journaling seems very important, just to get things correct, as they happened.  So this entry is a little OCD on details.  Sorry!

 Did you read that?  There are churches built where they believe the earth started, where Abraham sacrificed Isaac, where Jesus was born and where they believe he was crucified.  Churches! Whole buildings are standing around these points of ground.  Some places have been rebuilt after they were partially destroyed.  However, there seems to be one exception, the place where he rose from the dead.  But we will get to that in two days.  See I’m behind in my journaling, but we are leaving for Turkey today and I knew I would forget things about this place, so I’m up at 5 a.m. typing away on Todd’s laptop before we leave today at noon.

This is a picture inside the walls of the city.  This was in the early morning and not very many people are out and about.  One lady dressed in Isrealie dress, wagged her finger at me when I snapped her picture.  I still don’t know what she said, but by her body language she didn’t like me taking her  picture.

This is a man dressed in typical fashion, although there were thousands of different people dressed in all sorts of dress.  We did stand out like sore thumbs.  People would ask, “Where are you from?” we would answer, “America” they would say, “Yes, that is obvious, but where in America?”  The stones shown in the picture are smoothed from constant walking.  They are about 2000 years old.  Hmmmm, who was around about that time? Cool, huh.  I thought so too!

Oh, yeah, and this dude is on a cell phone.  Strange to see something so old, like his traditional dress, mix with something new like a cell phone.

This door led to a long flight of long stairs that led to a place called the Holy sepulcher.  It was a church built over a large mosulium that supposedly held Christ’s body.  Yeah, I know I thought that was a bunch of WHAT? Myself!

 Courtyard of the church.  The doorway to the church is behind Todd.  This doorway was nice and large.  There were a lot of doorways I had to lean over to get into.  Me, I’m 5’4”.  Those were little doorways.

The slab where Christ SUPOSEDLY lay after his death. Apparently people come from all over to just touch this slab of marble.  It was really smooth from all the people who had touched it.  There were women who had their foreheads pressed against it as we left the building.  There was also some guy who drove a mini tractor right into the building and parked it to the left in this picture.  All the while there were people who were having what they thought was a spiritual moment, and a loud tractor, which spewed noise and fumes everywhere, went by.  I realized how nice it is to be reverent in Holy places.

 I also thought how convenient places where to each other.  Right behind us, encased in the next room is a rock that whatever religion this church was, believed  Christ was crucified.  First of all, it was a ROCK! Who is able to put a long beam into a rock deep enough to hold up a person?  Enough of me ranting, I will just add more pics.

The place where they believed the cross was.  This little alter is over that place.  People were in line to get under this thing and kiss the ground.  EEWW!  How gross to kiss someplace someone else has.  And look at all the ornamentation.  Could there be another hanging something?  Doesn’t look like it.

 I forgot to mention that I was having a black and white day.  I had decided that morning to shoot most of my photos in black and white.  This church was architecturally magnificent!  So many stone pillars and works of art in the stone! And for some reason the light in this building was amazing!  This room was a huge dome room over a mosalium of where they believe Christ was entombed.  People!  There is no body!  Get a clue!

People waiting in line to see an empty place.  Senseless, it seems. But I also realized that these people need something to believe.  Something to hang onto, to fill that empty place inside us all that Heavenly Father used to fill when we were with Him. 

After we left the church, and by the way, I took soooo many pictures of that place because the building was so beautiful, and I could add many more, but it would take too long on this, anyway, after we left the church we were shone lots of streets where different districts were.  There was a Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Armenian market places running up and down these streets.  These boys were Jewish, if you can’t tell, and one was chasing the other.  The kids everywhere were so darling.  I think I miss my own kids.

The far wall, with the vegetation growing out of it, is called the Western Wall or the Weeping wall.  It is hard to see in this picture, but it is separated down the middle by a fence.  The area on the right of the fence is for women, the area on the left of the fence is for men.  This wall is what is left standing after Jerusalem was conquered yet again, and the conquers  came in and destroyed all of the walls except this one.  They call it the weeping wall because the Jews go there to mourn over the loss of their temple.  People go there and write things on pieces of paper and stuff the paper into the cracks in the wall.

This was taken behind a lady who was sitting as close to the women’s side of the wall as she could.  You can see the white pieces of paper in the cracks.  They looked like wads of gum to me.  But the people take this wall so seriously, that they do not turn around when it’s time to leave.  They walk backwards for at least ten steps, to show respect for the wall and so their behinds don’t face the wall.  Ok, whatever, when I was there I turned around and showed that wall my big behind!  I refuse to worship a wall!  Not to be disrespectful of what they believe, but I’m not that religion.

Our group of wives that got to come.  We are sitting in chairs near the wailing wall.  The first lady on the left is the wife of the main Architect for the Gilbert temple.  Her name is Rebecca Lambert.  And 2^nd from left is Angi Williams, her husband is the other project manager for Okland.  Then me.  Then the next two ladies are named Heidie Glen, and Linda Elder.  These two ladies are the wives of the men who are doing the tile for the temple.  The company they work for is called Caffall tile.  It is fun to get to know these ladies.  But I was also glad when we got to be with our husbands.  I thought maybe I had matured enough to be able to do well with groups of ladies, but I realized I had not.  They were wonderful in every way, I just got tired and wanted to go back to the hotel sometimes.  It was hard to meet everyones needs, and because we are all mothers, sometimes there were just too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Or some days it was the other was around. Not one chief and we all behaved like Indians waiting for someone to tell us what to do.

This is our guide Eric Grebelsky.  He was funny and very glad to show us around.  We were shown so many wonderful things here.  It’s like the Bible came to life after seeing all these places.  Imagine, we were in the city that the Saviour lived in.  Where he may have taught, walked, healed and preached.  Even if we didn’t see the exact spot, I didn’t care.  It was enough for me to get to just be there!

Todd with his whole fish!  This was one of the best meals we had while we were there.  The guy at the far end of the table is going to take us on a tour of his tile factory tomorrow.  He is another tile manufacturer.  His plant is in Bethlehem!

Todd and I at dinner. Thanks Coley for letting me borrow your earrings! Remember? You left them at my house and they haven’t made it back to you.  But hey, they have made it to Jerusalem!

Me and my fish!  I really didn’t eat the head.  But it’s eye was bulging at me! The fish itself was very good, but it was strange to be watched by a fish eye the whole time I was eating it. 

After Dinner with the fish watching me, we went into Old Jerusalem to see a few things and walk off dinner.  We got lost.  It’s like a maze down there.  Here is too many chiefs  looking at the map trying to get outta there.  Notice the guy leaning against the pillar.  He is one of the Architects with us and I know he was so tried of so many controllers.  His body slumped against the pillar is hilarious!  He seems to be saying, “I give up, you people are too much!”

So, some of my favorite things about Jerusalem, is how Christ was here, and their showers seem to have amazing pressure to them.  So showering is a delightful bath standing up.  The food hasn’t been as great as we thought it would be, (we are hoping Istanbul will be better) they eat a lot of vegetables here with hummus.  It was very unusual to find meat.  There was some but not a lot.  And their fruit is amazing!  I did however order a fruit plate on night at dinner and they brought me a small salad size plate with a whole orange, two small whole pears, a whole apple, and two brown and bruised bananas.  This was all together wrapped in saran wrap.  We were all tired and laughed at that fruit platter because he brought us almost rotten bananas.  Latter on we learned that that is the only way they have bananas, is brown and over ripe.

As strange a comparison as this is, that banana was like the city of Jerusalem.  There may be something good inside, but it’s hard to get to because all you see is at first glance is brown and buised skin.  Kinda like how there are so many religions competing for the position of ‘the true one’.  It was a good day, even if it ended with a brown banana.