Day 5 Saturday April 20th Holy Land Trip

We checked with Moti, our guide, and he said that the weather predictions for today were not good.  We were eating breakfast and looking out the window toward the east and it looked great. Some blue was in the sky, and we talked about weather people not always being correct. We finished eating and when we went out the front door we looked left (west) and soon found out that weather people might be more right than wrong, as a very angry black cloud was fast approaching us. The weather pattern here is from east to west. We knew then that we were in for a challenging day.

Our first stop was to see the "Jesus Boat".  This is a 27-foot-long boat that was found not too far from where we are staying.  It was discovered in 1986 and will hold around 15 to 20 people.  There is no direct provable tie to Jesus, but it is definitely a boat that was used during Jesus' life on earth.  It is housed in a museum on the grounds of the Kibbutz Nof Ginosar, where we are staying.

The Kibbutz settlements are a system of communal efforts where everyone shares equally.  Many say that this system was the driving force in developing Israel for the past 100 years.  Today they have morphed into something like corporations.

 Jesus Boat

                                Museum that houses the Jesus Boat

                                Rodja looking out for Doris
 
The next item on our list of things to do today was a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee.  The dock where we boarded was right behind the Jesus Boat Museum.  Between rain showers we got to the boat and boarded.

Susie and Polly thinking, "Maybe we should have taken the ark instead of the Jesus Boat!"

The views from out in the sea are fantastic, but not today.  This is a view looking west toward the Arbel Cliff (far left).  The Via Maris (first century freeway) used the gap in the mountains just to the right of the Arbel Cliff to go on to Megiddo and then down to Egypt.  Much biblical history is associated with this highway and the places along its route.

The boat stopped in the middle of the sea and we had a time of reflection on the trip and some devotional thoughts from Dale and several others. 

We then finished our boat ride and disembarked at the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee and had plans to visit the ancient city of Capernaum but mother nature had other ideas.  We decided to drive about 10 minutes to Rosh Pina just west of the sea for lunch and then see what the weather had in mind.  Rosh Pina was established around 1880, mostly by Russian immigrants, we were told.  We ate at the Macaroni Grill. We then drove back to the sea area and decided to take a chance on seeing Capernaum. It quit raining by the time we got there.

Capernaum was a very important town in the time of Jesus.  Jesus moved his "headquarters" there and spent a great deal of his time in the Evangelical Triangle (Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin forming the three points of the triangle).  Some say that upwards of 80% of his miracles were performed there. The picture below is what remains of an ancient synagogue.  This synagogue was built after the time of Jesus, but at the same site as the first century one.  Part of the foundation of the synagogue that Jesus possibly used can be seen right under one of the walls of the present synagogue ruins.  The traditional site of Peter's mother's house is just a few yards from the synagogue with an alien type structure built over its ruins housing a Catholic church.

Susie is standing in the door of the synagogue, maybe dreaming of being a modern day female version of biblical Samson

We see a lot of these plants (I think it is a Bougenvilla)

As we left Capernaum we decided to go to the Jordan River, as Dale and Joe wanted to be baptized there.  There is a site (one of 3 or 4 traditional sites) located at Yardnet, a few blocks south of where the Sea of Galilee deposits its waters into the Jordan for the short trip down to the Dead Sea.
By the time we arrived at the site the rain had slacked up to a light drizzle.  We got out and proceeded to the place where the baptisms took place.  We were accompanied by several hundred other people already there.  They rented their clothes and made their way to the water.

Joe coming up out of the water after Dale had baptized him.

Dale coming up out of the water after Joe, along with the help of Dale, had baptized him.

During both baptisms the rain started coming down quite hard. I guess you could say that they were both baptized by immersion and sprinkling. Before Dale could get out of the water two other people who were waiting to be baptized and had no one to help them asked him if he would baptize them.  He was happy to accommodate them.

After Dale and Joe had dressed, we headed back north to the hotel.  We had dinner and then a devotional time that ended the activities of the day.  Over all, we were blessed with the pauses in the rain that enabled us to get much of our agenda completed.  We head south to the Dead Sea tomorrow with several stops on the way.

God is good.