Saturday, July 10

Breakfast in the lovely garden of St. George Cathedral. They have a buffet of cereal, milk, coffee, tea, juice, pita bread, cheese, turkey, cucumbers, tomatoes, hummus, toast, jellies, butter and some type of fresh fruit each day. So far it has been the same each day except the fruit changes. It is a wonderful breakfast.

This morning we went to the Jerusalem Prayer Center. I will post pics on Facebook later – sorry this blog does not let me post pics. The J-House as it is also called sometimes is owned by Southern Baptists. It is a wonderful and very valuable property that was purchased many years ago when property was not as expensive. You can go to Jerusalemprayercenter.com to read more about this. We we came on a mission trip here in 2007 with Kenny Spain we worked on the library in this building, you may remember seeing pictures or hearing us talk about that being one of our projects here. It was called a prayer center then as well and there was a room for prayer. Now the entire library has been removed and both areas are now used as an Interactive Prayer Room. It is a large wonderful space where people can come in and pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray for the nations, or for any and all concerns you may have or that others have requested. After being shown around the JPC again by missionary Dale Thorne we spent a lengthy amount of time in the prayer center praying and having quiet time with the Lord.

While at the JPC we also saw Dan who is a missionary there as well that we had met in 2007. It was good to see him again. Dan retired from the IMB in Richmond several years ago and then came as a Masters Program missionary to Israel. He works as an accountant for the IMB here. Dale and his wife are here now as Masters Program missionaries but they began as missionaries here 50 years ago and now are back directing the prayer center. They have really done a lot of work at the JPC to make it an even more wonderful place.

Some prayers I read there were:

Thomas Merton (abbreviated)
My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me…
I trust in You always though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear for you are ever with me,
And y9ou will never leave me to face my struggles alone.

Prayer of St. Patrick (one portion)

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort me and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Paul’s Prayer
A Prayer for the Ephesians
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole heaven and on earth derives its name.Pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,1to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.


We decided to have lunch today in the old city. It was more crowded today and we definitely remembered why we do not bring groups here in summer. It is hot! It is about the same as Decatur but seems hotter somehow. We had a falafel lunch which was delicious. For those of you who may not know what that is – I guess you would call them chickpea croquettes served with several types of salads, hummus and pita bread to make sandwiches. You just stuff whatever you want in the pita bread. For $10 each it is a great meal – we may be eating that a lot! We took a walk up the Via Dolorosa Road for a while and then it was time to head back. I will post some pics I took in the Old City and some video I took just walking through the Old City. Mind you I was just holding my camera at waist level and holding it not really aiming it – just trying to give you a feel of the Old City. I will try to post that later. There is already a video posted of the Damascus gate and if you listen you will hear the Muslim call to prayer in the background.

We went to the Garden Tomb and just spent some quiet time there today. They were not really busy and it was too hot to do much of anything outside.

We went invited back to have dinner with the Garden Tomb staff tonight for a pizza going away party for three volunteers who will be leaving early next week. There was a small group of nine of us and we had a lovely dinner on the rooftop of the Garden Tomb director’s apartment which is on the Garden Tomb grounds. We have quite a lovely evening with seven British folk and us two Southern fried Alabamians. It was a lot of fun and the pizza from the Arab pizza shop was really good. We picked up the pizza on the way at Pizza House just beyond a shop called Yummy Corner.

It was quite a delightful evening with some wonderful British Christians. We are blessed with many opportunities to meet Christians.

I pray your day is blessed and that tomorrow will be a wonderful day of worship. Our wonderful friend, Lucky Teague will be preaching at Westmeade. You will be blessed to hear him bring the Word and he will make you laugh too!

Shalom