Today is a very very special day – the highlight of my entire trip!! I experienced probably the most beautiful Sunday service at the most beautiful site possible: the Gottesdienst from the Church of Loaves and Fishes right on the lake of Galilee. Because I am the guest at the Pilgerhaus, I was invited to this service, which is normally not open to public. Passing through the beautiful private garden of the church, I really enjoyed the fresh and crispy air in the morning. While I was just wondering where the service location is, I ran into a western lady and she signaled me to follow her. Then we started a conversation and I found out she is a German volunteer originally from Köln so we changed our conversation language to German. There were already about 25-30 people sitting quietly waiting for the service to start and I am just stunned at the natural beauty of this special sanctuary: its outdoor, right facing the lake, all the natural woods are seats for worshipers. So simple but I cant think of any other church more beautiful than this! It was a Catholic service in German but thanks to the Holy spirit that I was able to understand a lot of it. This is the first German service I attended after I was able to communicate in this language so that really excited me. I know that I would always remember this special Sunday service that I attended.
After coming back from church, I was finally able to check my emails after two days and also wrote a bunch of postcards before checking-out. Since today I am going down to Jerusalem and there are a list of sites I would like to stop by on the way, I need to leave as early as I can. I went to the St. Peters primacy first – this is where Jesus appeared in front of his disciples the third time after resurrection and gave the responsibility of the church to Peter (John 11:1 and 17). The church was built in the early 40s by the Franciscans in dark rock. The big rock inside the church is Mensa Christi (Spanish) on which Jesus conferred on Peter the responsibility of being the future head of church.
My next destination is Mt. Beatitudes, which was named after the Sermon on the Mount, during which Jesus proclaimed the Beatitudes to the crowd that came to listen to him (Matthew 5:3-11). Unfortunately again the church was closed at that hour so I just walked around and took couple of pictures of the church and the view of the lake from the top. Then I headed down along the Lake Galilee to Beit Shean and Yardenit. On the way I didnt stop at the location where they stored the ancient wooden boat in which Jesus and his disciples took passing the lake 2000 years ago which now I am a little regretted. So I got the picture from internet to show here:The boat was discovered in 1986 and the scholars found it was close to 2000 years old. Of course people cannot prove that this was exactly the boat Jesus took, but its still a good visual sign. My GPS was not able to find Yardenit again so I stopped at a Chinese restaurant by the lake in Tiberias to ask for direction and also have my lunch. Of course it was not really authentic Chinese and the owners were local, but still good to have some good warm food. I was excited when I arrived at Yardenit since it was supposed to be the place Jesus was baptized by John. The place is busy – many Americans were standing in the water getting baptized and there are scriptures of different languages on the wall. Water is very clear and cool. Its a beautiful place and also the start of the Jordan river. of course later on I found that this was actually not the original place – the real place is down in the Jordean desert in Jordan side (I saw later on the way) but not easily accessible. So they decided to move it here since this is the start of the river – honestly I found that I little ridiculous, oh, well.
The drive along the Jordean valley was interesting since the landscape changes dramatically. In no time I was driving through the desert. I took quite a few pictures while driving – definitely dangerous so I wont recommend that! In the middle of the highway I saw the sign Jericho so I was naturally turned towards that direction – this is one of the oldest city in the world and I read about it so many times in the Bible so I was very curious. However, the road discontinued for some reason. So all I could do was to take a picture of my rental car in front of the big rock. I was basically driving along the border of Israel and Jordan (my GPS didnt work most of the time but I didnt know why at that time yet). One sign on the highway shows Baptismal site so I knew that was the real location so I follow the sign. But after about 500 meter I saw big iron walls – I could see the church through the wall but I cannot pass because its in the Jordan site. And I couldnt take pictures either because it was a military base. Sigh!
Then continued drive for about 10 minutes Route 90 split and it signals Jerusalem to the right. I was getting more and more excited. The landscape again changed and I had never seen desert like this! The big granite rocks were almost orange color in the sundown and although there was a lot of traffic, I was just so excited, seeing the amazing nature and looking forward to the holy city! Jerusalem, I am coming!