Adventures of Day 1

Hey y’all! The first day of adventures couldn’t have started off any better. We started off at Beth Shemesh where we learned about our Bible friend Samson and how he actually was breaking his commitment to being a Nazarite for his entire life. It was so cool to see that despite our failures, God can still use us for his Kingdom. After Rich’s teaching we had the opportunity to walk down some (decently sketchy) steps into a cistern. There we were able to look back at some scriptures (Gen. 37: 20-24, Jerm. 38: 6-10 and 2:13) and see the significance of the cistern to these passages.

Our next stop was Azekah. Ever heard of David and Goliath? Standing on top of Azekah gave us the perfect view of the battle field (Valley of Elah) where it all went down (literally). We then headed down to the Valley of Elah and stopped at the stream where David got his stones to kill Goliath and we were able to take five stones (shhh) ;). Interestingly enough David took five stones which represented the five gate cities, kings and gods of the Philistines. However, David only used one stone to kill Goliath which represents that there is only one true God, the God of the Israelites.

We then headed off to Bet Guvrin/Maresha. Here we got to go underground to explore basements of an ancient city and also aqueducts called bell caves. I must say, singing the doxology and hearing it echo throughout the bell caves was pretty epic. Our last stop for the day was seeing the city that Abram (Abraham) built. There we got to climb down this massive well that led into an even bigger cistern than what we saw earlier.

We then packed up and headed down, down, down (1,200 ft below sea level to be exact) to our hotel at the Dead Sea. We are now hanging out and getting ready for another adventurous day tomorrow! Until next time!

Kayla Plouffe