Thoughts On [insert religious topic(s) here]

Besides a little Benadryl hangover, I was alright today. That’s a great blessing because today was packed with sights.

After breakfast, we drove to the Church of the Ascension outside the Old City. The church is located on the site where Jesus supposedly ascended to heaven after visiting the disciples for forty days after his death. I was caught off guard when we stepped off the bus and street sellers in the city immediately started accosting us trying to sell cheap goods and trinkets.

We pushed through a crowd and got the Church. It was very small, barely big enough for our group of 38. Inside the church was a single footprint, believed to be the last place Christ walked on the Earth. There isn’t any real evidence of this; historically, Crusaders in the 12^th and 13^th centuries CE would claim sites as holy without much proof of its authenticity. (more…)

We have reached the halfway point in the Journey to Jerusalem; I’m in Jerusalem as I write this post.

Our day began 140 miles to the north in Galilee having a sunrise service on the shores of the Sea. The service involved practically everyone on the trip. Our congregation was also the choir and an acappella group. There is a wonderful communal feeling to worship when everyone contributes their gifts to the overall experience-ironic that this was the same Sunday Anona did an acoustic worship service with budding musicians serving in worship leadership. (more…)

Shabbat Shalom!

After an exhausting day yesterday, I was glad to get to bed at 12:30 AM. I had to force myself to go though because I had discovered a free wireless signal in the lobby and wanted to stay on as long as possible. I’ll try and find it again tonight to send this blog.

If you didn’t catch it in the greeting, today is Sabbath. At breakfast we were all surprised to find that there wasn’t any food that had to be cooked that morning. All of it was prepared before sundown Friday night so that Saturday could be a day of rest for the cooks. It’s an interesting custom, but it was hard only having unleavened bread and vegetables for breakfast. (more…)

It was 40 degrees Celsius today. I can’t remember the conversion off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure that is over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It was HOT! Slighty humid and hot. My shirt was stuck to my body by the end of our day and we actually had two ladies, Mary Ellen and Carol Thorn, who needed to be attended to by one of the physicians on the trip. Thankfully they are both ok but they were definitely dehydrated. We were going non-stop from 8:15 in the morning. As you can tell by the title, we visited FIVE places today. Making matters worse, we stayed in a five square mile area for most of the day with the exception of our trip across the Sea of Galilee (which I will now refer to as “the Sea” as the biblical writers did). (more…)

Though I’m writing this at 1 AM, I’m finally getting these blogs written at the end of the day that it pertains to. This should allow me to better portray the experience since I haven’t had a night of sleep to forget it.

It has been a pattern that every morning we get a wake-up call at 6:45 AM, get breakfast at 7 AM and board the bus by 8 AM. This morning was no different. At breakfast, I talked with a few of the older ladies about getting up to watch the sunrise tomorrow morning at 6:30 over the shores of the Sea of Galilee. (Perhaps I’ll just stay up and wait for that to happen J) Just kidding…

***A quick side-note: I’m the youngest person on this trip by 25 years, and younger than most by 40 to 50 years. This is a trip comprised of older ladies and a few husbands who wanted to see the Holy Land. I’m along on the journey primarily to enjoy the experience like everyone else, but also to lead through song and prayer as I discern my call to ministry. Therefore, I’m getting opportunities to interact with people that I normally would never interact with outside of the church.*** (more…)

How nice it is to pass out on a bed after being up for about 40 hours. I woke up in the morning VERY refreshed and ready to go for the day. Breakfast was an interesting buffet; smoked herring, carrot pie, porridge were just a few of the odd dishes. I’m getting a bit more adventurous with the food. I tried some smoke herring, and Ann Waite convinced me to try some porridge. Both were… interesting… (more…)

After finishing the blog last night on the plane, I only managed to get 30 minutes of sleep. I was exhausted (still am) when we got off the plane at Ben Gurion. We collected our entire luggage and headed out to our tour bus. At the bus I met Ruthie, Jac’line’s friend from Jerusalem and our tour guide. We got on the bus and headed out towards Caesarea, our first site of the day. (I realize that was a bit rushed, but really, nothing exciting happened in the airport). Mind you, it is only 10 AM Israel time and we have a whole day of sightseeing ahead of us.

Once on the bus we drove north out of Tel Aviv and along the Mediterranean coastline-think A1A or US 101. The trip to Caesarea took about an hour. While we were driving, I took the time to load a few geo-caches into my GPS that were at Caesarea. Yes, that’s right, geo-caches. That will be my own little adventure piece for this trip to the Holy Land. Many of these caches require the seeker to really search the location and I’m looking forward to exploring at these ancient structures. (more…)

The journey has begun. I’m writing this from aboard a Boeing 777 flying over the North Atlantic. The flight is only two hours in and already my back is aching and I’m ready to be in Tel Aviv. The trip has not been without its surprises though. I spent much of my time in Tampa International putting together a resume to submit for an assistant youth minister position. I find resumes to be an all too brief way of applying for positions of ministry and thankfully, there is also an interview process. But more on that at a later date. The surprise with all this came when I tried to e-mail the final copy, only to find that the airport I was presently at (Newark) charged for an intermittent, weak wireless signal. I barely got the e-mail sent before we were getting on the plane to Tel Aviv. (more…)

Greetings! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mat Hotho. From September 1st to the 27th I will be traveling around much of Israel and Jordan. The purpose of this blog is two-fold: Firstly, I hope that it will allow you to not only read about my experiences, but also allow you to see what I’m seeing through the lens(es) of my camera every day.

Some of you who may recall I went to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji last summer. Over the course of the month-long trip I uploaded maybe 40 photos to Flickr and almost no backstory for any of them.The second purpose of this blog is that it will (ideally) force me to keep up with my photography and my journal as I travel this month. Not only will you, the reader, benefit from this, but I too will be able to look back on this trip once it is over.

With that said, I hope you will check back periodically over the next month.

Mat