Orson Hyde Park

The rest of the week I spent a lot of time getting ready for our finals. I took a Hebrew language final, an Old Testament final, a field trip final, and next week will take both the Israel and Palestinians finals. But I think the worst is over. Tomorrow we’ll be going to down to Eilat by the Gulf of Aqaba to go snorkeling. It’s supposed to be the best snorkeling in the world. After that we’ll be going to Bethlehem for the Fourth of July! I’ve learned quite of bit of things about Bethlehem but I think I’ll save those for next time. Hey a pretty good movie that we watched here was The Nativity which was put out in like 2006 or something. Shows a good job of portraying the people at the time, I believe.

One last thing that happened today; I got up this morning at 7 to go walk to Orson Hyde Park with other students. It’s really quite amazing that the church has been able to make a footprint in the Holy Land; Orson Hyde Park is right across the valley from the temple mount. The church does not own the park; however did pay to have it built and it has the name of the park in front. I was thinking about it and if it wasn’t for the conflict here we’d probably not have the buildings and programs here we do. In East Jerusalem, because the politics there are complicated because it used to belong to Jordan, the church was able to build the Jerusalem Center there on a lease for the land (because no one else will build there). Anyway, it was neat to open up to Luke 22 and read about the Mount of Olives and know I was right there where Christ prayed to his father. I also saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen, about the size of my palm. I also saw a huge ant with wings. Anyway, we walked down Orson Hyde Park, and then visited the church of all nations where they have some really old Olive Trees where I’ve talked about before in my blog.

Orson Hyde was an early church leader who traveled 18 months to reach Jerusalem and dedicate it for the preaching of the Gospel. He and the other missionaries didn’t have much success, and one or two even died here. They told us a story in the MTC about how because the graves of those missionaries were found here we could show the LDS church has had a presence in the holy land for a least a hundred years, allowing us to qualify building in Jerusalem. I’m not sure if it’s true but sure a good story huh? Well, today we can’t preach here, we’ll see what the future holds.

Veiw from Orson Hyde Park.