What an incredible Sunday!

Sunday,May 18

Our first stop was the Temple Mound Sifting Project. After a very interesting lecture by the archaeologist, we were able to sift through the ruins that were truck loaded out of the Temple Mound by the Muslims and dumped. They were reclaimed by the Israelis and are being sifted through every day. Our work was checked before we dumped the rock. Our best finds were a nail from a Roman sandal by Mike Olson and a pig bone found by :Paul Carlson. We all found pottery, glass, metal, a pig tooth, mosaic, etc.

Those who were not claustrophobic went through Hezekiah's tunnel. It was a long wait to do down and start and took about 30-40 minutes after we began. It was thigh deep at one point in the beginning and calf deep the rest of the way. The floor of the tunnel was very smooth, the water clear and cool. Most of the tunnel was a little more than shoulder wide and mostly abut 6 ft. tall. A few areas were lower and we needed to duck. The end of the tunnel was very high...maybe 20 ft. We sang Amazing Grace as we walked through.

City of David. They are excavations here and think they have found King David's Palace...watch the new for more info on this...if they find something that will identify it for sure. They are also excavating across the street and will very soon announce what is there. This is a new dig of maybe 3-4 years.

Population of the Old City is 30,000. The New City which was started 160 years ago has a population of 800,000.

Lunch was at a beautiful park in King David city. It is a very expensive are with multimillion dollar homes. We had extra, extra, extra large pretzels for lunch with goat cheese, hummus,olive oil and hyssop. An authentic Israeli lunch..yummy!

We stopped at a beautiful overlook on the south side of the wall. You could see the Israeli side and the Arab side of Jerusalem, which used to be divided by a wall than came down after the war in 1967. Off in the distance the wall that separates the area under Palestinian rule.

We were blessed to hear a lecture by Dr. Scott Carroll. A highlight that words or pictures won't explain!!

After dinner we have a final sharing time together. Our team has become like family. What a great group!