Brooke and Kelsie Take on Jerusalem: Sabbath and Sunday... Yes they are different!

Saturday, September 3

First off, I am very sorry our blogging has been so on and off already. The wifi here is absolutely terrible and so it is hardly working enough for it to actually post. We will try to find times when everyone is not using the wifi so we can publish our posts weekly.

ANYWAYS! Yesterday was the Sabbath. Here in Jerusalem the Sabbath is on Saturday which is a little bit weird only because the next day we treat as our Saturday. So instead of having class the day after church, we have a free day which is nice! Other than that it does not feel too different to have church on Saturday. The chapel here is a room full of windows overlooking the Old City with a huge organ in the back. The speaker stands right in front of the windows and so the view is a little bit distracting... Brooke and I do not have callings yet which means we will most likely be giving talks I am assuming... :( I wanted a calling in primary more than anything. (The professors here all have kids and there are some locals with kids and so they have a small primary that meets in the bomb shelter haha fun fact).

The past few days Brooke and I have been napping and waking up completely delirious. We do not feel jet lagged at all until we wake up... haha maybe it is time to stop taking naps. In our defense our naps usually aren't that long ;) its just a quick snooze to get us through the rest of the day since we get up so early and stay up so late.

Sunday, September 4

Today we woke up and had breakfast and then went into the city first thing. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and walked around and went into the Holy Tomb where they believe that Christ was placed after his death. It was very interesting seeing their worship ceremonies in all the different places around the building. We were able to enter the tomb and see where they believe Christ was buried and it was so amazing. It's a small tomb with just a stone bed where many people go in and pray and light a candle. It was a very reverent, interesting place. We then went through the shops and went to one that TOTALLY caters to the Mormons. First off, when you walk through the shops, all the shop keepers yell out "Hello Mormons" "Special price for you Mormons" "BYU we have stuff for you!" It is hilarious how much they love the Mormons (because they know we souvenir shop haha). But the shop we went to is so sweet to the Mormons and they pretty much rely on the Mormons for their income. Half of the things they sell have BYU or CTR written on them or they have scripture cases and different things for us. The shop owner came and found us in the street and walked us all the way to his shop and gave us a cup of juice right when we walked in because "We know Mormons do not drink tea or coffee and so we have cold drink for you". They then proceeded to tell us the best prices for everything and what shops have the best deals and nicest shopkeepers. They will let us take the scripture cases home and if they do not work we can bring them back. They are going to let us borrow their Israeli dresses for our Israeli night. They exchange our money for free for us right at their shop, so we get 100% what our money is worth. They are so very nice. Brooke and I will have to get a picture with the shop owner and his son to show you them. His name is Shabbon and his son is named Omar and they are great! Shabbon's brother in law has a shop right across from his and he sells sandals and other items that they don't have for great prices too! The students in the past have loved him (his name is Rida) and have written him notes and even drew pictures for him because he was so awesome. Definitely going to get a cool CTR ring in Hebrew from him :) He's giving us an awesome discount too because he loves the students so much!

The Holy Sepulchure

The Dome of the Rock

After we did some shopping we did The Ramparts Walk which is along the wall around the whole city which had incredible views. We also went under the city in a cave that was recently discovered. The cave was created when the people thousands of years ago needed stone to build their city so they went below the city to get stone. Just a side note, for the most part, the people here are very kind and like having us here, but when we were walking back to the center, there was this man walking in front of us and before he crossed the street he yelled, "Get out of Jerusalem!" and then spat towards us. It threw me off. It was really weird especially since we weren't doing anything to offend him or anything, but he must just have a bad experience of the mormons in the past or something. Plus the kids here like to tease us by riding their bikes really close to us and pretend to hit us with their bikes or yell things at us. Its just interesting the different things the people here do because they know we are so different. After that we went back to the Jerusalem Center and... take a guess... took a nap! haha only for an hour, and then we went to dinner and then watched The Prince of Egypt with a few other people on the projector in our Forum room. Now we are blogging and going to bed!