Learning by doing

Shalom from the Sea of Galilee! Today is day five of our Israel study tour. We started out this morning visiting Qatzrin where a "first century" woman dressed in costume showed us how wheat is threshed and ground. Her presentation had a humorous moment when her "pigeon rang" (aka cell phone) in the middle of her demonstration. We even got to make our own pita bread and experience a little of what living in community was like in the first century. Our tour continued with a stop at an olive oil factory where we learned about different types of olive oils used for cooking and cosmetics.

Mount Bental and the Golan Heights were next. There we were able to look across the border of Israel and see Syria to the east and Mount Herman to the west. We walked through the ruins of Caesarea Philipi once the site of debase pagan worship and later destroyed by an earthquake, hiked to the beautiful Banias Falls, stopped at a private vineyard for wine tasting and capped off our day with Pastor Darin reading from the gospel of Matthew, the Beattitudes Jesus taught while we stood at the very likely spot in which He delivered that teaching to the multitudes.

—Ellen Benson