On May 28 we reached the spiritual pinnacle of our pilgrimage as we retraced the footsteps of our Savior during the last hours of his life and felt the deep appreciation these places created for the sacrifice of the Son of God.
The Mount of Olives is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to the Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. Several key events in the life of Jesus as related in the Gospels took place on the Mount of Olives, and in the Book of Acts it is described as the place from which Jesus ascended to heaven.
Gethsemane is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives, most famous as the place where Jesus prayed and his disciples slept the night before Jesus' crucifixion.
HOLY PLACE
Here Jesus began
his passion
suffered - sweated blood
Michael gave a lecture about the things that transpired in the Garden of Gethsemane.
While in Gethsemane, we could see the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. We discussed together how Christ would have been able to see his accusers leave the gate of the city and make their way down the hill and over to where he was in Gethsemane.
The Church of All Nations, also known as the Church or Basilica of the Agony, is a Roman Catholic Church located on the Mount of Olives next to the Garden of Gethsemane. It enshrines a section of bedrock where Jesus is said to have prayed before his arrest.
We were used to seeing signs near churches, basilicas and mosques showing tasteful pictures of how people should dress when entering a holy place. Most of the time it showed a picture of a man and a woman wearing shorts and tank tops with a line through them urging modesty in dress.
This makeshift cardboard 3D sign hanging at the entrance of this particular church made me laugh out loud!
Standing near the front entrance of the Church of All Nations showing the distance from it to the Old City of Jerusalem with the Dome of the Rock barely visible.
The beautiful flowers near the church.
We walked back through the rest of the Garden of Gethsemane on our way out.
We stopped in the Garden to get a photo taken with Rob and Joy Jones. Glen had gotten to know him while she and I were olive wood shopping. We had talked with each other about our children. We both have five children. We both have one of our children living in San Francisco. The more we talked, the more we figured out their daughter and our son probably know each other since there are only two wards in San Francisco and Abe and Klarissa have now lived in both wards.
Sure enough, their daughter Kelsey is good friends with Klarissa, and she and her husband Zack live in the same ward as Abe and Klarissa. Both couples have recently had baby girls and both of us parents were planning to go to San Francisco in June to see our granddaughters be blessed. We were bummed it didn't work out that we would be there the same week. They went the first week of June and we went Father's Day weekend.
In pure Abe style, on the week Kelsey's parents were in San Francisco, he took a picture of them and sent the photo to us mimicking the photo we'd sent to him--with him and Klarissa standing in our places next to Rob and Joy.
The Church of Mary Magdalene is a Russian Orthodox Church located on the Mount of Olives. The church is dedicated to Mary Magdalene who was the first to see Christ after his resurrection. She is considered a crucial and important disciple of Jesus. The church was built in 1886 and has seven distinctive gilded onion domes.
Sign pointing to Zion Gate, one of the eight gates in the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Sign pointing to King David's Tomb and Room of the Last Supper.
Dormition Abbey is located on Mount Zion just outside the walls of the Old City near the Zion Gate. This modern building was built in the early 1900s upon the ruins of a previously destroyed church.
According to local tradition it was upon this spot, near the site of the Last Supper, that the Blessed Virgin Mary died, or at least ended her worldly existence. In the Catholic dogma of the Assumption (or Dormition) of Mary, Christ's mother was taken body and soul to heaven.
King David's Tomb on Mount Zion.
Everywhere we went we walked uphill (both ways--coming and going--or so it felt like...). Looking down on the bus parking area where we parked.
The sign in the bus parking lot lists what the Holy Place we are about to see commemorates:
- the appearance of Jesus to the high priest Caiaphas
- sentencing Jesus to death by the Sanhedrin
- triple denial of Peter and his repentance when the rooster crows.
The Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu is a Roman Catholic church located on the eastern slope of Mount Zion just outside the walled Old City of Jerusalem. The church takes its name from the Latin word meaning cock's crow in commemoration of Peter's triple rejection of Jesus...
before the cock crows twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.
After the fall of Jerusalem, the church fell into ruin and was not rebuilt until 1931. Today a golden rooster protrudes prominently from the roof in honor of its biblical connection.
We gathered in the sanctuary so we could hear Michael give another lecture.
This spot is also believed to be the location of the High Priest Caiaphas' palace where Jesus was bound and questioned.
Engraved artwork on the church's outside wall: After the Supper, Jesus left the Upper Room with His disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley.
Jesus was arrested and taken to Caiaphas the high priest.
Jesus may have taken these steps after being arrested.
The Jaffa Gate straight ahead with the Tower of David to the right.
The Jaffa Gate was named after the port of Jaffa, from which the Prophet Jonah embarked on his sea journey.
Within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are the last four Stations of the Cross (a series of images depicting Jesus Christ on the day of his crucifixion) along the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of Jesus' Passion.
The Via Dolorosa is a street, in two parts, within the Old City of Jerusalem, held to be the path that Jesus walked, carrying his cross, on the way to his crucifixion. Much of the route is lined with shops.
Golgotha--the place of a skull. This picture depicts an earlier photo taken to show what the cliff looked like before the lower part was leveled out to make a parking lot.
The eyes and nose are still visible.
The Garden Tomb is considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus.
Time for dinner at the the Dan Hotel. Such yummy-looking desserts.
But the waffles continued to be Glen and Steven's favorite dessert.
We went shopping again after dinner at Jimmy's with Steven and Patricia. Between us, we bought nine olive wood nativity sets for all of our combined children. We were wondering how much they weighed, thinking about getting them home on the airplane.
We still don't know how much they weighed because the scale at the hotel was in kilograms and we didn't know the pounds equivalent.
We did know the exact step count though! Step count for the day was 13,781 which is 6.96 miles.
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