Jordan River

We had a nice day on Day 5 of Galilee. It was Saturday, which is church day in Israel. We went to the branch in Tiberias. There are about 10 people in the branch, and they meet in a little converted house with a great view of the Sea of Galilee. I’m getting pretty spoiled going to church in Israel. We have amazing views wherever we meet.

View from the church building’s balcony:

Are you sick of my pictures of the Sea of Galilee yet? There are definitely more coming in later posts. Notice that I’m wearing HEELS! It’s been a long, long summer with no high heels. So then I bought some in Nazareth and I obviously had to wear them immediately.

In front of the meeting house with my roommate Kelby:

I had a cool experience going to church here, because I got to say the opening prayer in Hebrew! Jesus mainly spoke Aramaic, but he would have prayed in Hebrew. So it was cool to get to do that right by the Sea of Galilee. 

The people that attend the branch are multi-lingual. There are some people that speak Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Russian. So we also got to hear the sacrament prayers in Hebrew, talks in English, and then the closing prayer in Spanish. It reminded me of my foreign language housing ward!

After church we stopped at Yardenit, which is a site on the Jordan River where people commemorate Jesus’ baptism. If you remember from my Jordan posts, we also stopped at a baptismal site there.

Something cool about this site was that it’s decorated with Jesus’ baptism story in tons of different languages. I posed with my two favorite languages, French and Hebrew. In the pictures, you can also see Chinese, Sri Lankan, and Aramaic.

Standing in the Jordan River!

This is kind of like the view in the Bible pictures. Look it up!