Church in Israel

Going to church in Israel was a dream, really, if nothing less than for the view we had from our seats each Shabbat.




The Jerusalem branch meets in the Jerusalem Center auditorium, where they also hold free monthly concerts open to the public. Since any form of proselyting in Israel is not allowed (to keep the BYU Jerusalem Center there, this contract was made with the Israeli government before the Center was even finished being built), church is only for the few LDS who are living in Israel--most of them are ex-pats, but there are Filipino and a few others who live there as domestic servants. The Jerusalem Center branch, when I was there, had just the students and service couples living at the Center and a few American families who were going to school/working there. And maybe an Israeli or two who had joined the church many, many years ago...?

The excitement was that once, Truman Madsen and his wife came to our church meeting (they taught our Sunday School!) and once, Daniel Rona graced us with his presence. And I even shook his hand. :) (This man took my father and grandparents on a tour of the Holy Land back when my dad got off his mission.)



I heard that this $600,000 organ was donated anonymously. It is beautiful. And I got to play it--there are few things more magnificent than sitting here playing this organ as the sun sets over the Holy City.



This is the chapel up at the Galilee. We were there when it was dedicated by Elder Holland, and unless I am mistaken and we rent the property, it is the only building the church owns in Israel (the Jerusalem Center is built on land that is on a 99 year lease--it is very hard to buy land in Jerusalem).



The chapel is small but the left side wall is a large window looking out over the Sea of Galilee:



The window/wall is next to a walk out balcony.



Isn't it beautiful?



The Tiberias branch, like the Tel Aviv branch, had several different nationalities that attend church. Here is their hymn number holder, telling the hymn number in the English, Russian, Spanish, and Hebrew hymnbooks.

I went to the Tel Aviv branch once, and there they had 4 sections (even though they only had about 20 people) in the congregation: Tagalog, Spanish, Russian, and English. And a translator sat in the middle of each section and translated Sacrament meeting into each respective language. It made for a pretty noisy church meeting...but at least no one could fall asleep, right? :)

The rest are pictures of members of the Jerusalem branch:



The Relief Society president.



Most of the Primary children.



A family that lived in the Palestinian village below the Center. He was studying at Hebrew University for a year.

Class at the JC

Classes at the Jerusalem Center were quite...interesting. We had class 6 days a week, Sunday-Friday (Saturday is the Sabbath in Jerusalem), and were given quite a heavy workload (which may or may not have been done by most of the students). Many of our classes were in the same classroom every day, every class, shown below:





More than half the time there was at least one person in the class sleeping...





In addition to time spent in the classroom, we often had class "on site." Actually, each time we were "on site" (meaning out where the events actually happened) our instructors were instructing. To accommodate all 44 students, they gave us each headsets which we were supposed to wear so we could hear the professor wherever we were at the archaeological site. This made for some pretty sweet looking pictures. :)









Sunglasses? Check. Headphones? Check. Hard hats?



Check.



Since we spent so much time on site, we also spent much of our time on the bus. Too bad for those of you who get car sick or claustrophobic, ipods are not allowed. (Story on this to come later...)



This was our Jewish history professor. He was bald and always wore the kippuh...and since most males in Israel kept their kippuhs on their heads by using bobby pins between the hat and the hair, and he had no hair, we always wondered how he kept his kippuh on...



He also gave us a large amount of reading assignments. Like upwards of 5,000 pages worth. He would copy them and stick them in the library upstairs, and one day he came to class and mentioned that he was a bit worried because they were all still there. Don't worry, we took them up to the Sea of Galilee with us...if for nothing else, they were useful for firewood...





This was our Arabic professor. His name was Ayman, and we loved him. His English was great and one time he mentioned "foot fingers." It was a laugh a minute. And then he invited us to his house to eat dinner and meet his family.



We loved him.