Galilee Day Five--March 20th

“When I am filled with strong desire and ask a boon of him, I see no miracle of living fire, but what I ask flows into me. And when the tempest rages high I feel no arm around me thrust, but every storm goes rolling by when I repose in him my trust.”

--Come Unto Him
Hymn #114

Today, of course, was our Sabbath day in Israel. My class didn’t have church until 2:15 (or at least didn’t have to leave the kibbutz until 2:15) so I had a relaxing morning full of updating my blog, mostly.

At 2:15 we got on the bus and headed to a place called Yardenit. It’s a place on the Jordan River where Christian pilgrims gather to be renew their baptisms by getting baptized once again in the Jordan River.

This was a very interesting thing to me. There was only one group when we were there but my teachers explained to us how it us during busy times. They said that every religion has their own special way of baptizing. Some of the religions have the people go out individually and dunk themselves in the water; others have their priests sprinkle water on them, so on and so forth. The group I watched today was pretty similar to our practice except for the huge difference of authority. Besides observing the method of baptism, it was even more interesting to hear what their priest was teaching them before they were baptized. I liked what I heard from the group today, it was all very true teachings about the Savior and I liked seeing the faith and devotion of the people.


Jordan River!







After that we went to have sacrament meeting in Tiberius. The meeting house is so beautiful. It looks like a house (in fact it was a house that the church bought and gutted and made into a meeting house) and right when you walk into the building you see the most spectacular view of the Galilee. While you’re sitting in your seat and looking at the speaker, behind them is just bright blue water. So pretty. The people in this part of the world really deserve a meeting place like that, they have been waiting for forever to have somewhere to meet. Up until March 17, 2007 when the church was dedicated, they were meeting in each other’s houses and other various places. During the first intifada there were only three members of the Galilee branch and the church was seriously considering shutting the branch down. The issue went to the prophet of the church (I can’t remember who it was, maybe Kimball?) who said that almost all of the time when you shut down a branch it never comes back.


What you see during Sacrament meeting


Our musical number quartet


The view from the roof of the Tiberius branch meeting house

Out sacrament meeting was really good. I sang a musical number in a quartet. We sang Come Until Him (Hymn #114) which is my absolute favorite hymn and I think it portrays my whole striving and experience of my time in Jerusalem and Galilee.

Later that night after dinner we had a fireside given by the Galilee Branch couple. They gave us the history of the Galilee branch and then we broke up into four groups in which we could ask some of the branch members questions. My group was assigned to a 15 year old boy who was very outspoken and funny. At one point of the meeting he killed a bug on his white shirt by slapping himself in the middle of a thought. It was really funny, he was an interesting fellow. But despite of his different personality I’ve still got to hand it to him. Being the only youth in the Galilee region while attending a Jewish school would be hard. How do they do it? They just do. And they do it cheerfully and full of optimism and faith.

After the fireside I wrote in my journal and went to bed. I was pooped. But today was an all around good day for me to think of my devotion to the gospel and to the Savior and to double my efforts and commit myself once again.