Our Final Day in Israel and Home, Sweet Home

Greetings Friends and Family,

We wanted to give you a recap of our last day in Israel before returning home. Currently we are at home with the kids! It was a long day of travel yesterday but we are thankful to be home and to be settling back in to normal life here as a family. Our trip to Israel was a life-changing experience and we are still processing the impact that it will have on our lives.

Our last day in Israel was a little slower paced, but extremely full emotionally. We had the morning to rest and pack before leaving our hotel. We tried to enjoy a slow morning and make sure we had all of the last minute souvenirs and gifts with us to take home.

Mid-morning we left for Ein Karem, a small town on the West side of Jerusalem that was the home of John the Baptist and where Mary visited Elizabeth when she was pregnant with Jesus. We were shocked at the amount of greenery and pine trees on this side of Israel because on the other side of Jerusalem it is desert and brown. But we enjoyed the smell of pines and a visit to the church of St. John the Baptist.

We thought this sign outside the church was kind of funny

Byzantine painting of John the Baptist

Inside the Church

 After lunch we visited 'Yad Vashem' the Jewish Holocaust Museum. We knew it would be an emotional experience but I wasn't prepared for what we would experience. The Museum does a phenomenal job of telling about the history and development leading up to the Holocaust and the Anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews that contributed to the eventual plan of the 'Final Solution', Hitler's plot to exterminate the Jewish people from planet Earth. Most of the Museum is told from the first hand accounts of victims and survivors of the Holocaust: letters, pictures, belongings, video interviews...all were gut-wrenching accounts of the pure evil that Jews suffered during that time. The most overwhelming part was the Children's memorial. We walked into a dark room full of candles with mirrors, a candle for every one of the 1.5 million children murdered during the Holocaust. In the dark room their names and ages were being read. I stayed in there as long as I could, to hear the names and honor those children who were lost, but it was admittedly very overwhelming and I wept.

View from Holocaust Museum

Our final stop on our tour was the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb is a possible alternative location to the death and resurrection of Jesus to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It does not claim to be THE place, but the organization that cares for the area has maintained it as a garden and limits the amount of people who can be in there at one time. It was a welcome difference from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It has beautiful gardens and an empty tomb that very well could've been the tomb Jesus stepped out of. We had the chance to enjoy the garden, walk in and out of the empty tomb and culminate our trip by sharing communion together. It was phenomenal!

Sign for the Garden Tomb

Golgotha (place of the skull) can you see the face? 

Me and my Dad at the empty tomb

The Garden Tomb

Our trip home was long and grueling. There were about 9 layers of security at the Tel Aviv airport in Israel to leave the country. The first leg went ok. It was the longest and we were able to sleep a little bit. But we were only left with 90 minutes between our flights and the rest of our group didn't make it through customs in time, we were the only ones to make the flight. Fortunately the rest of our group caught a later flight, but it added quite a bit of stress to the trip. Then we flew from Philadelphia to Phoenix, the Phoenix to Portland. We finally made it home last night about 5:30pm and went to bed at 8!

The kids did great without us thanks to everyone who helped out and they loved the presents we brought home for them. We are doing laundry, dishes and getting back into a regular routine.

I will post one more summary blog next week sometime when we have a chance to process a little more our trip together. We are so thankful to have this experience and we know that we will never be the same because of what we have seen and experienced together.

Thanks for following us on our adventure!

Grace and Peace,

Ryan and Kealy