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I thought i'd throw some pix at you. i get the feeling that some of you are looking for some family faces. everybody is doing great! i think lewis has a bit of a problem focusing on the right thing since his interests are being tried over here. i hope you get the hints!

i think at this point most of us fighting some soreness and i for one am missing my 3 little children. Karina, i miss your first at the door hugs. rendall, i miss your infectious smile and running at the door screaming daddyy daddyyyyyyy! Mariah, i miss your sweet hug and kiss every morning when i'm in my home office studying and praying. i wish i could hold you all three! HUGS and KISSES!!

Day 8 Zealots and Golan heights

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our morning starts with breakfast at 6:15 and at 6:55 we gather under a tree for the morning meditation and prayer. after this we got on the bus and they took us to the other side of the Galilee and we visited the place where the zealots lived when the Romans staged combat. the zealots had a fanatical commitment to the word of God. make sure you have a tour member tell you the story when they come back. the picture of the pointed hill on the right is where they lived when the romans attached them. they said bloodshed was terrible. history tells us the blood ran down this mountain like a stream. the picture in the middle is where they had their synagogue for the studying of the Torah!

we are studying a lot of history during the time Jesus came into this world to show the mess he faced. this place was a horrible place to live. there was destruction and blood shed all over the place. make sure you have a tour member explain how the word of God was studied. the jews show an amazing amount of respect to the Torah! very challenging. we also studied the text jesus used and were shown when in the old testament it was used before jesus preached it. the picture on the left is the road to Damascus about 5 miles south of the Syrian boarder. Jesus walked up here from galilee with his disciples. our minds are on information overload!!!!

our last place was where the god of fertility was worshiped. here they had goats heads and the most lewd stuff i ever heard. i could never write about the horrific stuff they did here. this place the bible calls Cesarea phillipi. jesus brought his disciples up here before he died. ask a member to tell you what Jesus preached here to his disciples. its a wow, now you know what he meant when he said, "take up his cross and follow me...." i can't even begin to unpackage this awesome truth.

the last picture is the collection of water packs after we come back from hiking all day and the restaurant has food ready........bite!!!!

Day 7 in Galilee

after arriving in galilee last night, we are all looking forward to the blessing at the same hotel for 5 straight days. bless God! WOW! this morning we ate our breakfast and hurried to the tree in front of the hotel for our morning word from God, we call it reading the text. i think most of us were thinking, great, we left the desert and now the steep climbing and 115 temperatures are behind us. nice surprise RVL! we get to the base of mt arbel and he tells us we are going that way pointing and i'm great, walking between 2 mountains and it will be great. was i ever wrong!!! we climbed this baby you see in the picture to the top. with out the help from each other we wouldn't have been able to make it. rugged with path of rock and at times maybe 12" wide and 80 degrees up. the rocks had cable and steel handles to grab or there was no way to go up there. now something happened up there that i think caused about everybody to shed tears. i cannot tell you on this blog. ask the person that you know who is with this group to tell you in person. if you email me next week i'll tell you, but only after we return. it took us around 4 hours to do this trip. there were times on the way down where it was straight down and we were hanging by those steel steps and wires. yes and that included Dale & Erma!!!! The lessons learned will have to be told next week, perhaps in every church!

The pix of the yellow hill is the place believed to be where Jesus fed the 5000, sermon on the mount. we had a wonderful teaching on the mountain 2 times. sorry am so tired i will have to get the notes from my room to give the details. the point is i'm half asleep.

thanks for your comments. this blog is averaging about 200 daily visits. may God be blessed by each of you as you read these words. i hope to give another faith lesson tomorrow. keep praying for us. we are very tired, our feet are burning, my knees are suddenly today giving me problems. God is good! Shalom

Day 6 dead sea scrolls hike

While most of you were sleeping we were heading out to Qumran for a lessons on commitment from the essenes. these people lived by the dead sea and believed in studying very seriously and preached repentence by water baptism. they would memorize the whole old testament. one challenge was on memorizing scriptures so that God can bring it to our head when the need arises at that special appointed time. Thy word have i hid in my heart that i may not sin against thee. these people were about 20,000 in count and gave their whole life to God. some believe John the baptist may have come from this group. here is where most of the dead sea scrolls came from. check the pictures out, we climbed way up the stone mountain and saw cave number 9 where they found the scrolls. you need to see my video to fully apprecite the place they hid these. the climb was very steep and at one time we experienced the mercy of God as a sister slipped and fell and saved by her husband's hand hanging down a steep cliff/hill into the canyon. no doubt your prayers saved her life. she hung on till we had more people join in dragging her back up. God is good! don't worry just pray!

Karina, here is a picture of the hotel room by the dead sea. Also today we climbed the mountain where Lot and Abraham seperated ways. Next we went into a cave/staple and celebrated the birth of the Messiah. Merry christmas. We continued to the sea of Galilee and will spend the next 5 nights here at the same hotel. another lesson was the manger, it was a stone tub where the sheep would drink their water from. ever wondered where the crisscross manger ideas come from?

Pray for our legs and feet, they are taking a serious beating! Its been many years since my body took a physical beating like this! smiles!! I can see my golf buddies laughing and wondering if i can outdrive mike now with these powerful leg muscles!

Food for thought, John the baptist came from the wilderness preaching repentence. What did he eat? Locust and wild honey. The word locust in the hebrew means carob. We broke one off from a tree and are bring it home.

I was humbled by the wonderful group as they took an offering on the bus to pay my internet connections so i can continue to blog with words and pictures.

Day 5 continued

After viewing the land where Abraham lived we were shown Bedouin hospitality. We were humbled by love from these people. They didn't know we were coming till about 5 minutes before we arrived. we arrived at noon and they welcomed us that made you almost cry. these are muslim people that treated us. they made sweet tea and unleavened bread and made it for us. they had food for all 52 of us. they made the bread, including making a fire and they bring everything to the room in front of us. its amazing, ask any of the people traveling when they get home.

next we hiked the masada that king herod made for himself around 30 bc. check out this picture and bless GOD we all made it up and back down. the history circled around this rock is hard to describe. what a wicked king he was.

to the family of jimmy, check your dad and hubby floating in the dead sea like a dead man. you walk in the sea and your legs just come up. it was so cool, my biggest struggle was trying to get my legs down after they surfaced.

Mark and Joetta, i was walking by the dead sea when a man was heading to our hotel and he said he was from kirksville missouri. I couldn't help but think of you.

Rendall, Karina & Mariah We miss you so much! your mommy and daddy are experiencing a life changing experience that will give you a life to follow with many exciting stories. God has been so good to your mommy and daddy! We love you so much!

Day 5, Masada, Bedouin Visit

Today was another great day! Each day when we get back and reflect, we say, "Now today was the best day yet." So today was another best day. We started off with being in a synagogue in Abram's area where we had the whole blood covenant teaching. It was really something to think about that when it was Abram's turn to step in that blood, God, knowing full well that Abram couldn't be perfect, said, "I will take your place. If you fail, you can kill me." He knew that we would mess up. So right there he sentenced Jesus to die. It was a very touching moment. A lot of these places we visit, are ruins that archeologists are still uncovering, and they can tell by the stones, or lots of different ways, whose era and time frame it belonged to. So some are completely uncovered, some are restored & alot of them are still undiscovered. There is great respect for these places & we can touch & see things close up. We see virtually no one all day, until we get to the motels. We are in the deep desert mountains at times hiking for hours in 115 degree sun! Studying in this setting is so powerful.
I'll finish the story of today after dinner. it gets very interesting!

More pictures

Don't have time to write as we need to head down for breakfast. i got up early in hopes of getting some pictures on here. the rough terrain here where we walked looks impassable nor did i think any man could ever climb these rocks. after we started, we found tiny path up the mountain at times barely a foot wide and so steep you almost could climb without another hand. yes, in this wilderness is where Jesus went to be tested and also where john the baptist came out of. on the road (tiny path) we walked today was where david walked on his way up to Bethlehem.