Overnight train ride from Luxor to Cairo Feb.1,2008

This is the narrow hallway on the train and our small rooms which converted in to bunkbeds.

Muhammad Ali Mosque

February 9, 2008
We became better acquainted with Islam in a mosque from the 7th century and another from the 1800’s. Our guide taught us about his faith and practice of Islam. They refer to their basic beliefs as the five pillars of Islam: 1.) Allah is God and Mohammed is his prophet; 2.) Prayer five times a day; 3.) tithes or offerings to the poor; 4.) pilgrimage to Mecca; 5.) Fasting during the daylight hours of the month of Ramdan. He also indicated that they believe that there are three main prophets: Moses for the Jews, Jesus for the Christians, and Mohammed for the Muslims. We did not have the opportunity to ask many questions on the ramifications of such a belief with regards to the rest of the world, but that will just have to wait.

Hiking Mount Sinai

We woke up at 2am, met the students for hot chocolate at 2:30am, and then loaded the 2 busses to go to the base of Mt Sinai, where we began our hike around 3:30am. Our goal was to make it to the top for the sunrise at 6:30am. We made it by 6:15am and saw the most beautiful sunrise. We have been recovering from our trip, jumping right back into the class schedule here, teaching class, correcting tests, having meetings, returning to Aladdins for more shekels, back to the store to fill the fridge with food.Craig just laid down to rest, he and many others have been dealing with curse of Pharaoh’s revenge, which came back with us from Egypt the last day of the trip.

Orson Hyde Memorial Garden

We enjoyed a nice Sabbath evening walk to the

Orson Hyde

Memorial Park. The park is about a five minute walk from the Jerusalem Center.

Sabbath dinner and visit with Sahar

We had Sahar join us for dinner after our Sabbath meetings. She is a Palestinian Christian who lives in Bethlehem. She is a member of the church and joined while attending BYU about 12 years ago. This will be her last time to come to church because of the new security wall that has gone up around Bethlehem, which is part of the West Bank. The Christians in Bethlehem can get a 4 week permit to enter Jerusalem because of the Holiday. Sahar will need to wait another year now before she can return to the Jerusalem Branch, which meets here at the Jerusalem Center. She just completed her PHD in Statistics and in a few weeks she will be teaching at a University in Jeanine, which is in the West Bank. Sahar is a great pioneer woman here in Israel. I admire her courage and faith to carry on. Sahar gave the most beautiful prayer in sacrament meeting. She prayed for peace for the people here, that their hearts could be softened so they could live together in peace. She prayed for the light of Christ, that was once here, to return and be here again.

Field Trip: Jerusalem from the surrounding mountains

We took a day to see Jerusalem from the highpoints to the north, south, east, and west. We climbed the tower of Lutheran Church on the ridge of the Mount of Olives (Augusta Victoria) from where we could see east the mountain ridges of the nation of Jordan and right down to the Dead Sea. This was clearer than any day that we had last time we were here. We went to the south where we could look one direction and clearly see the Old City of Jerusalem and another direction we could see the city of Bethlehem. At the end of the day we went as close to the West Bank as we will take the students and looked over the lands of the Old Testament from the roof of a mosque at Nabi Samwil (The prophet Samuel).

While visiting the Old City during free time with the students, we were able to get up on the Temple Mount which is not always open to visitors. They opened it between 12:30 and 1:30pm and we were gratful to get in. It was a beautiful day and we ran into Derek and Daniel, who were there with other students. The Dome of the Rock is the oldest Moslem monument in existence today. Since the last intifada in 2000 they have allowed only Moselms into the mosques, but we still had a nice visit and enjoyed the spirit of the Moslem holy mount of sanctuary. We noticed that they refer to the Dome of the Mosque as THE Mosque, even though there are many other mosques in the city.