Our group consisted of nine full time YouthFront staff and 17 college students who work in YouthFront Camps during the summer. What a blast…
Highlights, for the group, were the time we spent in meditation at the Mt. of Beatitudes, The Garden of Gethsemane, St. Peter in Gallicantu, re-enacting the Last Supper at the Biblical Research Gardens in Ein Karem and the Garden Tomb.
Highlights for me - Being able to teach on location (this was trip twenty for me, but as long as there are people experiencing it for the first time, it never gets old); exposing our group to some of my friends – Costandi Canavati, an Arab Christian from Bethlehem and Avi Mizrachi, a Jewish follower of Jesus in Tel Aviv; communion and anointing with oil at the Garden Tomb; Hamat Gadar, the 2000 year old Roman Spa and hot springs that Vicki and I went to for our anniversary; and the conversations.
A very cool moment happened at St. Peter in Gallicantu. This is on the site where the High Priest Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin conducted its initial interrogation of Jesus after he was arrested. This is, perhaps, the only place in all of the Holy Land where we can say with a high probability, “Jesus walked right here.” The “right here” is the excavated steps that served as the main connection between the Kidron Valley and Mt. Zion. The High Priest’s house, where Jesus was taken to after his Gethsemane arrest, was right off these steps. So we are standing there and I’m pointing out the courtyard outside of the Sanhedrin where Peter waited. I describe the High Priests encounter with Jesus and then turn to Peter’s denials. Speaking about his third denial, I said, “Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know the man!’” I paused and at that precise moment a cock crowed. You had to be there!
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