Journey of Faith

Seriously, watch it. It's a documentary by LDS scholars about the journey of Lehi and his family across the Arabian peninsula and to the promised land. We watched it tonight after Branch Prayer. Actually, our Academic Director is one of the commentators in it, and the Executive Producer and worked on a lot of the research for it. But it is fascinating. Seriously, I wish they would do that for the entire Book of Mormon. I would watch it. And the thing is, if you want to get a taste of what it's like to be here, learning about the Bible, watch this movie, because it's the same kind of things we learn about places in the Bible, and you get to see all these sights just like we do. I'm telling you, it will change the way you read 1 Nephi. If you do watch it, which I hope you all will, my Academic Director is Kent S. Brown, so watch for him. He's the one with the funny hat, lol (and his wardrobe in the movie is totally typical of how he dresses every day, lol).

Today was Shabbat. My Uncle David and Aunt Judy- my grandpa's brother and his wife- were here for sacrament meeting. I was kinda bummed they didn't stay for the rest of church, and I only saw them for a few minutes, but it was good to see them. Plus they brought me the candy hearts that my dad sent me for Valentine's Day. :) Mike's friend- well, a girl who was baptized by his best friend, who he kinda knows- Alisa, was here today as well. She'll actually be here for the next two weeks. She had an amazing story that she shared with us in testimony meeting. She never knew her father, only his name and that he lived in Jerusalem. So she's here trying to find him and his family to do their genealogy. She said the first day she was here, she went to the Old City, and in the first shop she entered, she kind of casually asked the shop owner about the origins of her father's name- like whether it's Israeli or Palestinian or what. And he just looked at her and said, "You're his daughter." She hadn't even mentioned that she was looking for her father, but it turns out that this shop owner is a cousin of her father (who's no longer alive, it turns out), and he was able to connect her with her father's family. How incredible is that? It's amazing the way the Lord works in our lives. She said that she believes that her father has been waiting for her to join the church and find him, so that he could have his work done. Miracles have never ceased, I can testify of that.

After church Mike, Alisa, Ken and I went to Gethsemane. I actually went into the Church of All Nations this time. It's actually a really cool lookin church. Mike said that a monk told him the last time he was there that it's also called the Church of the Agony. All the windows are dark purple stained glass, so it's really dark in there, and at the front are three paintings depicting the events of Christ's suffering and arrest, which are lit. And the light from the doorway is blocked by a beautiful partition that looks like intertwining olive branches. It was really a neat place.

We also got to walk through the private section of the garden that I mentioned last time, which was pretty cool. It didn't have the big, super knobbly, 2000 year old trees in it like the one next to the church, but it was very peaceful and it was nice to be able to walk through it instead of looking through a fence. And it had some cool olive trees, too, just not quite like the other ones.

Well, then we came back and had dinner, which was exceptional. I took a nap, Mike and I watched the last 15 minutes of the Emporer's New Groove in the few minutes before Branch Prayer (some other people had been watching it), and then we watched Journey of Faith. Which, seriously, if you have any desire at all to get a taste of what I'm experiencing, watch it.