Monday, long day

 We’ve been on the road for a couple days, which has been extremely tiring, but also very enriching. Here’s a make-up blog to share what happened on Monday, December 8^th…

Sunday night’s dinner at Foccacia (incredible Italian food!)

Monday was a crazy day that seemed like it would never end. We found out that Egypt had closed the border crossings due to the muslim celebration going on. So, after lounging in the morning we loaded up at 10:00 am and headed out. About an hour down the road to Jericho, our guide realized we were missing papers we needed. So, we backtracked, losing a couple hours in the process.

On the border

Our group at the border, waiting

On the border – Closed

The lost time required us to make a decision, visit Massada or Timna Park. Massada is the ancient Roman fortress  on the hills surrounding the Dead Sea. It was here that thousands of jewish revolters met their death at the hands of the Roman army in 70 AD. Timna contains a life size replica of the tabernacle the Israelites worshiped in during their wandering in the desert. We chose Timna.

Lori and I having fun on the ride

Greg and Kim enjoying the ride

After 6 hours of driving, and a McDonald’s stop (it was AWESOME!), we hit Timna. What an awesome learning tool as we walked through the tabernacle, experiencing what the Israelites saw, and hearing from our guide how every piece and instrument in the tabernacle points to Christ. Everyone agreed that we made the right choice, as this truly enriched our faith and showed us how much thought God puts into our worship. What a great reminder that we ought to do the same!

Our Israel guide, Fabrecio. You’ll be seeing him in Phoenix this fall at Palm Valley.

After Timna we stopped at a truck stop for dinner, then headed down to the border of Egypt to wait for it to open.  We got to the border about 7:30, and to our surprise we were pretty close to the front of the line. Our guide had us get off the bus and get into line. Over the next hour, I made a bunch of friends, including Indian Christians and more Nigerian Christians, and I almost set off an international incident! You had to be there

Me and a new friend, John Jacob from India.

Another friendship formed at the border, a pastor/author from Nigeria

Right before the border opened our guide told us to get back on the bus because they would drive us past the Israel border into the holding area. About an hour later we cleared customs and met our Egyptian guide, Harry. We passed through all kinds of security checks and loaded up on the bus, about 11:00 pm.  They also assigned us an armed soldier complete with an Uzi, very reassuring

The drive across the Egyptian desert was crazy, as the roads were pretty bad. At times we slowed down to about 10 miles per hour due to holes and dips in the road. We also hit check points about every 30-45 minutes. I tried to sleep on the bus, but it didn’t work. We finally got to our hotel in the Sinai peninsula about 4:00 am, which gave us about 3 hours to sleep!

With our driver, Elias. He was awesome, and is truly a friend!

As you can see, it was an eventful day. All part of the joy of traveling. I had a blast the whole time, keeping things fun and reminding the group how blessed we are to get to do this. The group had a great attitude the whole time, and we actually had  a lot of fun trying to guess what would happen next!