The end

At the garden tomb

The place of the skull?

Greg speaking to us after communion:

The tomb:

It's empty!

At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Amazing conglomeration of architecture and art. Note the two different styles of arch directly adjacent to one another.

The Shewmakers

Mother and daughter, Kathy and Kristi

Two good snaps

Barbara Kinkaid composing self, and our tour guide David with Christy Herrscher

Two of our loveliest

Doris Bass and Merrie Ann King

The Damascus gate

We went into the tunnels...

... adjacent to the Temple Mount and saw this foundation stone in the western wall--570 tons

Bob upright again.

The southwest corner of the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall.

The terrors of the shopping malls:

That afternoon with Ellen

We visited a large model of the city of Jerusalem and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls depository.

In the grotto

Jerusalem ...

... in the time of Jesus was a town of about 1,500 people. This was due to the availability of water from the springs. All towns in ancient times had to be built by the spring and in the desert, they had to discover water hidden in the rocks before they could settle. They would tap on the rock to listen for s hollow sound and then strike the rock. Water would come out revealing a support to life. The tall Corinthian columns in the Bethlehem church are made out of ONE piece of stone!!!

St. Jerome

More from Ellen in Bethlehem: In the courtyard there is a statue of St Jerome who spent 45 years here translating the Bible.

The Bethlehem stable church

We went to the basilica and grotto in Bethlehem where the stable below is where Jesus was born. We went down into the stable which is actually a cave. Since there was a paucity of wood, everything was made out of stone. The manger is actually the feeding trough for animals. In the church there are three Christian sects that live in the church- Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic- they all have separate churches within the basilica. The Mosaic than can be seen through the floor was in 400 AD. The next conquerors built a bigger church on top but did not use the mosaic because that church was smaller and represented something religious which they did not want to use.

These are some posts from Ellen as Bob was sick on this outing. Bethlehem is town of 50,000 and it seems to be run by the Arabs. All of the shops are in Arabic! This is the town square.