Day 1 (June 4)

[writtenJune 4, 2009  3:03pm Israel]

 

Things I did for the first time ever today:

1.     Walked around an active archaeological dig site

2.     Saw Bethsaida

3.     Excavated shards of pottery from the 2^nd and 3^rd century BCE and from the Greco-Roman era

4.     Saw the sea of Galilee

5.     Swam in the sea of Galilee

6.     Walked on water at the sea of Galilee

7.     Lied about walking on water.  I might have lied about that before.

Today was a great first day here at the Bethsaida excavation project.  We awoke at 5:00am to get ready and head to the dig.  I haven’t woken up that early to work in a good while.  It made the day feel really long.  We worked at the dig site from 6am to 12:30pm.  I’m glad it stopped when it did cause it was already really hot.  The site is incredible.  I walked up the paved road way (rocks placed down around the outer wall centuries ago).  There is an outer and inner wall around Bethsaida.  The  “L” shaped entrance prevented attacks at full speed to the front gate.  We were working just inside the main gate excavating some sort of room (we are still trying to figure out the purpose of this room).  There are so many interesting personalities here.  I have loved getting to know them.  Just observing them is quite entertaining in and of itself. 

I think these first few weeks here at the site are really going to be about developing relationships with people here (and falling in love with getting to work with history this closely).   There are a lot of believers in the group, more than I was expecting.  I have already gotten to meet some pretty great people.  People are here for so many different reasons so it is a diverse group.

One thing’s for sure, this feels worlds apart from Indiana.  The oldest things I’ve seen in the States were trees.  Here I am actually touching, walking on and excavating things that are much older than anything I’ve ever even seen before.  I LOVE it. 

Swimming in the Sea of Galilee was a pretty surreal experience.  I image there are many more such experiences here to come.  I just sort of walked on in like it was any other body of water and then while I was swimming out a way, I stopped to look around and remembered where I was.  It was a cool moment.  Then I though about how in Mark there is a scene describe when a crowd is with Jesus on one side of the lake and then he gets in a boat to cross to the other side.