As we left the southern end of the Dead Sea this morning it was only a short drive to Ein Gedi, a magnificent spring in the desert where David hid from King Saul when he was being pursued by him. The story of King Saul and his 3,000 men searching for David is well worth the read – check it out in 1 Samuel 24. There are some quite comical moments as David sneaks up on King Saul relieving himself in a cave. We walked a beautiful pathway to the first waterfall, passing hyrex [rock badgers] and ibex.  Our guide said that he had never seen so many animals out at the same time this early in the morning. Once again, a blessing for us. The majority of us continued walking up some more trails to the upper falls and wow, what a sight. This pure water from the springs was beautiful to wade in. We didn’t want to leave. But we had to.

Journeying north, we came to Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. Such an amazing story of the oldest scrolls of some of the scriptures being made available to us in a miraculous way.

We heard the story of the Essenes, a separatist group of zealous Jews who lived pure lives in the wilderness who gave themselves the task of copying out the scriptures and protecting them by hiding in porcelain jars. We saw the ruins of their living and bathing quarters, and saw the caves in the hills where they slept. It is possible that John the Baptist was an Essene, but it cannot be verified. In the years following 1947, several more searches have been done and more scrolls have been located over the surrounding kilometres in a number of caves.These early scrolls show quite clearly that the scriptures we have are very accurate.

From Qumran we were able to drive into Jericho in the West Bank. Our guide, Erez, needed to check several times to be sure it was safe to do so. In all the months leading up to our trip, we were confident God would take care of us, and in the preceding month when hostilities flared up between Israel and Hamas, we were asked by so many people whether we would still be going. We continued to pray, believing confidently that all would be alright, and we shared that with everyone who asked. We feel so blessed that the day we entered Israel a ceasefire was proclaimed and it seems to be holding. To be able to visit Jericho was such a blessing. This is believed to be the oldest city in the world, with archaeological evidence of its existence about 10,000 years ago. It is easy to see why a city has been at this location for so many thousands of years as it is without doubt, an oasis in the middle of desert.

We climbed the Tel and saw a fantastic view over the city, as well as several ruins. It was tremendous to see part of the wall that would have fallen at the time of Joshua. And even on a lower level we saw ruins from the time of Abraham. From Jericho we could also see the Jordan River and the Mount of Temptation. Very moving to again read from the Scriptures.

Following this we then travelled to the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. Several of our group removed their shoes and waded in the Jordan at the entrance steps. The Jordan river today is a very narrow and quite dirty stream, however it was still moving to be close to the place where Jesus and John had been. The damming further up the river has reduced its size considerably. While there, we read from Matthew 3:13-17.

Being so close to the Jordanian border again at this site, we were surprised to hear that the Israeli buffer zone still contains landmines. We took the advice of not walking across the fences.

We continued north to Beit She’an, another fantastic ancient site with many ruins. This ancient place was a wealthy major trading city, but unfortunately a lot of the ruins have been damaged by an earthquake in the 8th century.

This group is ‘growing together’ so much we even sat on the latrine together in Beit She’an! The Romans were incredibly ingenious with a continuous flow of water available underneath, and each person sat between the protruding stones to do their business and it was then whisked away in the flow.

We were there as the afternoon drew long and we knew it had been a hot day, and we discovered that the temperature was in the low 40s at. No wonder so many of us were flagging as we walked round and up and down. But it was so worth it!

We arrived at our hotel for the next 4 nights a little after 5pm. The Sea of Galilee greeted us warmly and we ate dinner at a local restaurant as the sun set behind Tiberius on the opposite shore. This hotel is part of a kibbutz, and we certainly appreciated the airconditioning after such a hot and busy day.