day three!

i'm feeling hardworking, i am.. heh. shall post this up and run off to sleep.. it's 1.58am SG time, btw, since i tweaked my skin to make the timestamp vanish. wanted to phlog, actually, but have given up in favour of directing people to the shots taken by our extremely talented and hardworking photographers - jimmy, chris, gary and gabe. Words cannot do their photos justice. Only the images themselves can. Go look!

day 3 ~ jerusalem
: jerusalem grows on you. see its website for more details.
: 530am wake up call.. how gross is that.. fortunately israel is 5 hours behind singapore time!
: mount of olives - pst ulf preached - large group photo. (as an aside: gary, ka man and i were blocked by the *ahem* taller people in front of us *edmund and chocks, ahem ahem!* sheesh! kateks of the world unite and move to the front next time!)
: saw my first camel! =)
: mount of olives faces the temple mount. its sides are covered with jewish graves cos they wanna be e first to rise from the dead at the second coming.
: view of golden gate on east side (Jesus entered the old city by) - it's now bricked closed. but it will open again cos He will enter the same way He once came. amen!
: entered old city via the dung gate (southern side - i think). it's closest to the temple mount. went up to the level of the temple - the height rebuilt by Herod, ie the second temple. (note: Zechariah and Haggai built the second temple, Nehemiah the wall, but Herod rebuilt and enlarged the temple and it's therefore known as Herod's temple.)
: temple mount - dome of the Rock. the ultra orthodox jews are forbidden, ironically, by their rabbis from coming; reason being you can't be sure if you're accidentally stepping onto the holy of holies.
: unisex and gross toilets. oh dear. actually on hindsight i think all the girls traipsed into the men's. oops.
: one side of the temple mount was higher than the other - it got levelled. whoohoo, herod! great builder indeed.
: via dolorosa through the muslim quarter - tradition holds that this is the path Jesus walked to His crucifixion. immortalized in the Passion of the Christ. strange to walk on the ground that He may have dripped His blood on. one needs to get used to this sort of strangeness, in Jerusalem.
: fourteen stations, ending in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the christian quarter, held to be the site of the crucifixion.
: lunch - chicken shwarma. ate with bro chris, sis jas for the first time in a long time.
: walked through the old city to the jewish quarter it's obviously more affluent.
: the cardo, the route that brought us to roman ruins and byzantine architecture.
: wall of hezekiah. strange to view it thru railings and a dog-dung smell.
: western wall. remains of the retaining wall of herod's temple. closest to the holy of holies. like a giant message board to God, the papers stuffed in the cracks. the Presence is simply so strong as you draw near.
: praying there for 15 mins is barely long enough. yet i feel the sweat soak through my shirt even in the arid air. the devoutness of those old men and women who recite their prayers for hours is amazing.
: menachem begin heritage center. no understand speaker's angmoh?? oh man.
: thank God for shumin's sweets. =)
: garden tomb - fantastically peaceful.
: golgotha - the place of the skull. maybe the site of the crucifixion?
: For He is not here - He is risen!
: communion.
: dinner in the strange and faraway royal wing of the renaissance. alan's amazing appetite. two bunches of grapes, three bowls of soup and three plates of food. yeeha!
: i discover i like the israeli version of potato salad. =)

Oh man what a long post. and those are just my summaries. sheesh! it's 3.12 am! goodnight, world!