A Recap

So, It's been forever since I did anything on here. I have a lot to catch up on. So this is going to be a general blog post, a few pics, a few thoughts, and then out.


After my adventure in Africa, I ended the semester and headed back to the states for the summer. I played around in Utah for a little while, then the family headed to Costa Rica for a vacation. We had some great times.

Back in Utah, I dinked around and got some work done. Eventually I headed down to Cali to stay with my brother and sis-in-law (Phil and Nicole) with their little daughter, Tori. Phil is at Stanford. While there, I was able to get some good work done on papers that were past due.

During all this time though, I was privileged to renew an old acquaintance and friendship that blossomed rather quickly and unexpectedly into a wonderful engagement. So, now I'm getting married this year, something completely unexpected, but entirely welcome! Analyn is a good ole friend from High School. We dated for a very short time, and to say the least, both "just knew." So, very quickly we decided that marriage was the future for us. It's been amazing how well it has all worked out. If you want to read a much better account, look here.

well to the consternation of all, I had return to my studies. I headed back to Israel after beginning the wedding preparations (Feb 6th we get married) and I'm helping as much as I can from long distance. This semester has been a hard one, but I'm getting through it despite missing Analyn lots. I'm finding lots of things to fill my time. I successfully found a great apartment for the two of us- she's quitting her job and coming out here for my last semester. It's gonna be great times! In this picture I was helping out with the olive harvest at the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives.
So things go forward. I'm hoping to make it through the rest of this semester intact and can't wait for February.

so yeah...long time...

So, I decided to skip school three weeks before the end of the semester and head off to Africa. It might have been a silly idea as far as academics go, but it was a great idea for many other reasons. I joined a humanitarian expedition that my father, sister and some other people I know from back home were going on with a group called ASCEND Alliance. They run a lot of missions down to South America, but they also have a standard biannual run to Ethiopia. So, I jumped on that bandwagon since Ethiopia is only a hop-skip-n'-a-jump away from Israel.
It was an astounding journey. I met up with everyone in the capital of Addis Ababa, after having tried my best to cram all the Amharic I could from the word bank found in the travel magazine of Ethiopian Airlines. I think I can still count to 10 and probably say thank you, hello, and what's your name? We took a small tour around the capital, above you can see us on tour at the main Cathedral of St. George, they didn't have electric lights in one section of a museum there, so we had to use liturgical candles to light the way. We saw Lucy, the oldest human fossil remains ever! (not as impressive as you might think...the picture to the left though is the menu from the restaurant right outside the museum though), and then headed down south to the town that we were staying in. The village we worked in, Bikkajjoo, was about 45 minutes outside of Debre Zeit. It was a larger village than I thought it would be, about 1500 people I think they said.
Anyway, it was a great experience. I mainly ended up helping as a gopher/small time first aid caregiver in the medical clinic that my father helped run because, as an EMT I have a little bit more than "none" in the medical training department. But I also rotated out to see the other projects and things that were going on. The group also helped refurbish a school (repainting, plastering, etc), building latrines for the community, playing soccer with the locals, giving out donated goods and clothing, and teaching courses on personal finances and personal hygiene.
We of course were mobbed by about a billion people. They all wanted to see the firanjis (white people/foreigners) and we had a lot of fun interacting with them. We ended up seeing about 2000 people in the medical clinic (rough estimate). We saw a lot of parasitic infections, eye problems, arthritis, etc, and a few random extreme cases. The nice thing about Ethiopia (as opposed to poorer nations...not that Ethiopia isn't poor...) was that there was a pretty nice hospital in Debre Zeit (where we were staying) that the villagers could get to if it was required, and the capital with an even greater medical facility wasn't completely out of the question.
So we had a lot of fun. It was another great experience that taught me a lot about how much I take for granted. Humility break now....
The last day, everyone else headed off to see some African wildlife in Kenya, but I had to get back to Jerusalem to finish off the semester. Sadly I also caught a really nasty bug that last day that had me puking outside of a souvenir shop in the capital before I went to the airport...at least I left a part of me in Ethiopia...

Sadly, I personally didn't take a lot of pictures, I was trying to be hard at work in the clinic and didn't end up taking tons. Also, they had assigned someone else to take pictures for the whole group and I will get copies of them (eventually). But here are a few. To the left is me and Tomrat, one of our translators. One of the ASCEND interns that was in-country basically raided the local church branch for members who could translate. There were 4 or 5 who were actually all getting their mission papers together. Tamrot wants to go to BYU for school eventually (after his mission, if you look carefully, you can see he's wearing a BYU shirt) to study chemical engineering. Below is the only real picture I have from in the clinic.

Haram al-Sharif

So, a while ago, I was able to go on a VIP tour of what the Muslims refer to as the Haram al-Sharif (or the Noble Sanctuary) and the Jews call the Temple Mount. This was a great opportunity because normally the buildings up there, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque are off limits to the public. This is mainly for security reasons (not anything related to Islam). The restriction (as far as I know...) was set down in 2000 after Ariel Sharon went up on the Mount and made some inflammatory remarks while at the mosque. This was partially the cause that set off the 2nd Intifada.
So, since I wasn't able to tour through it with my padre when he came to visit, I thought I'd put up some pictures, and videos as well as some thoughts on it all.

From my experience journal:

I woke up this morning at 7 am with Kyler Kronmiller, one of the members of the branch who works at the Consulate and is in charge of the religious affairs portfolio there, calling to see if I would like to come join a VIP tour of the Haram al-Sharif as they had had someone drop out. At first I refused, because I was sleepy and confused and would have had to get dressed and ready and get to the old city within half an hour. I thought about it though, and decided that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity because I would be allowed to tour through the Dome of the Rock as well as the al-Aqsa mosque. So I hustled myself down to Stephen’s/Lion’s gate to meet the tour. It turned out that there were a lot of spaces on the tour that were not taken up by consulate workers, but instead were other Mormons who had been “smuggled” in. It was a pretty cool experience.

The tour guide led us onto the Haram al-Sharif and talked a little about the religions and what the general landmarks were: the Golden Gate, through which the Messiah will come, etc. He was very careful to avoid mentioning anything specifically Jewish, though he did say some things that referenced it. All in all, his English wasn’t the best, so some of what he tried to say was garbled, but I figured I already knew everything that he would explain on the outside.

We went into the Dome of the Rock, (took our shoes off of course) and he led us around and explained the overall architecture and motifs found in the building. The best part of the experience, though, was right when we entered the building. There was a man doing his prayers right there, standing, prostrating and kneeling, etc.

Despite this, and in true Arab/Israeli fashion, the tour guide launched into his spiel in a loud voice describing very mundane things (watch the video...). I had pulled out my camera to film this first little spiel and was lucky enough to get the flabbergasted response of the man praying who slowly rose, and began berating the tour guide for choosing to do his explanation right there and so loudly as someone was trying to pray. It was great! They of course argued for a second, but then the tour guide just went on.

We looked around the building really quick seeing the basic architecture- the columns, pillars, octagonal shapes and windows, inscriptions, etc. Then we went down into the Rock of the Dome of the Rock to see down there. It was interesting, but slightly anti-climactic. (But then again, how inspiring can a simple cave in a very plain rock be? Maybe you just have to be Muslim, or Jewish…but if you were really spiritually religious Jewish you wouldn’t be there….). Photography in the building was hard because the lighting was rather dim, and the room is large, so flashes don’t work and you can’t get really good pics. On top of that, they have been doing some renovations for the last couple years, so the middle is covered in scaffolding and blocked out of view. You can see all this in the background of some of these pictures. As well, we were kind of squished on time, so we were hustling, I only had a few minutes in the Dome and the Mosque.

After that, we went out and headed across to the al-Aqsa mosque. This is probably one of my favorite mosques I have ever been in. (The picture on the left is of Koran kursi or seat, meant to hold a holy book while one reads).The outside is very bland, plain and somewhat depressing, but inside, the walls are a pristine white, and the ceilings are intricate, with either wood carving or plaster moldings. The hypostyle hall is raised and has sufficient large windows to allow in a lot of light (as opposed to the Dome, whose windows are small and covered with intricate mashrabiyya which blocks out a lot of the light). There are a lot of stained glass windows, one of which is a particularly massive and impressive one that was put in place by the Crusaders. Apparently, its beauty outweighs who constructed it. (Sadly, we were so squeezed for time, I didn't get a picture of it...)

The mosque has a particular place within Islamic theology as being the historical “First Qibla” or direction of pray. Muhammad changed the direction to Mecca about the time of the Hijra (622 AD). So this place has been pretty important for a long time to a lot of people. The Crusaders used it as a palace and a church.

More modern aspects that are apparent in the building are: 1- a bullet hole in one of the pillars that marks the place where Amir Abdullah I of Jordan/Transjordan was assassinated in 1951; 2- Bullet holes in other pillars dating from the 1967 War when the Israelis took control of East Jerusalem from the Jordanians; and 3- a glass cabinet (see below) containing grenades, shells and other implements of war from that same conflict that were collected from the mosque and its surroundings. Kinda funny things to have in a building dedicated to worshipping the God of Peace. This last picture is of the minbar, or place from which the Imam will offer the Friday sermons. This one was apparently commissioned specially for this mosque and is made of like a bajillion little pieces of wood put together without nails or glue. Simply because of where it is located, you can be sure that it has seen its fair share of fiery rhetoric and inflammatory speeches meant to incite rebellion...

This last video is just a general picture of the mosque...