Back from the Holy Land

What an amazing experience I had.  I loved Jerusalem.  I would love to go back in a few years.  I think it will take that long to recover from the plane ride.  We seen so much stuff that it was very tiring.  We would go from 7:30 a.m. until 9:30 p.m. most days. I had 5 favorites.  The Garden of Gethsemane was awesome.  There is a church that is in part of the place now.  They build Cathedrals everywhere that something good happened.  These tend to take away from the spiritual aspect but at the Garden of Gethsemane there is part of it that is locked up that not everyone gets to go in.  We got to got in it and it was amazing.  The spirit was definitely there.  We had a little devotional and then we had time to find somewhere to sit on our own and either read scriptures or just sit and enjoy.  It is a beautiful little garden.  After going there we went straight to Sacrament Meeting at the Jerusalem Center.  It has huge windows that overlook the whole city of Jerusalem.  That is their chapel so you look over the city while listening to the speakers.  We sang There Is a Green Hill Far Away but we had just been there.  It was quite the experience.  Another of my favorites was the Garden Tomb.  The Catholics believe this all happened somewhere else and built a cathedral over it but our prophets have said that the Garden Tomb is the place.  I got to go inside the tomb and see where Jesus was laid.  It was a beautiful peaceful place to be.  The wailing wall was another of my favorites.  Just to see how devoted the Jewish people are to their religion was very interesting.  It was so interesting to watch them pray and think they needed to be by the wall.  Another of my favorites was Nazareth.  They have made a place called Nazareth Village that they have recreated a huge area that is just like it would have been in Jesus day.  I learned so much here that I couldn't believe it.  My last favorite was Galilee.  We were here for two days and it was a great experience to see all the places that Jesus performed miracles and to go out on the Sea of Galilee.  We seen so much more but these were my favorite spots.  John and Kim Bytheway were on our tour so each night as we got back to the hotel we had a fireside given by him or Jim Gee our leader.  I really learned a lot about the scriptures at each of these.  I am a visual learner so seeing all the places that Jesus was has really opened the scriptures for me.  I suggest this trip to everyone.  I never felt nervous or felt unsafe.  It was great.  I would post pictures if I could figure out how to do a slideshow of them but I don't know how to do that.