So I'm really sorry I didn't blog yesterday, not because everyone back home is dying to read my next post (that'd just be too cocky of me to assume), more because we had a pretty amazing day and I didn't share anything. The only thing was it was so amazing and so long...that I think it wore me out because I went to bed just as soon as I possibly could - which meant no blogging.
We began by visiting a few sites that were important in the times of David and Goliath; a lookout where we could oversee where the battle would have taken place, as well as fields that would have been important to David as a shepherd. We also visited a field similar to the one where David would have slain Goliath. Chris, Miriam, Stefanie and I were able to construct our own paper box Goliath the night before, so everyone took their turn slinging rocks at it and trying to see if they couldn't kill him. (Chris was finally successful and after taking the giant down, proceeded to follow the rest of the Biblical account by running across the field and "cutting off" Goliath's head). After that we visited several sites that had caves dating from 2,000 to 2,300 years ago - the Hellenistic times. Some of these caves were huge water cisterns, while others housed pigeons (they would harvest fertilizer from these pigeons). Others still contained olive presses in them, which were very well preserved for how old they are, and one of the most fun ones was an old tomb (we actually fit 26 people inside of one tomb!) We had a lot of fun running around and exploring in these caves, (Brother Huff called it "splunking") because while some of them were part of a national park and easy to navigate, there were others through which you had barely enough room to fit yourself - meaning you had to wiggle your way through. We ate lunch outside of one of these and made friends with an awesome chameleon who was way more tame than I expected him to be. The cool thing was it really changed colors depending on what it was by! It turned bright yellow-green when we put him by our yellow lunch sacks, and black when I put him on my shirt! So that was pretty cool. One of the other really neat things we got to do in the caves is sing hymns all together. We all bring our small hymn books to the different sites we visit, and take the opportunity to sing when we can. We're especially lucky when the acoustics improve our sound. Singing the hymns really makes the spirit so much stronger no matter where you are.
After all that exploring we were allowed about an hour and a half to eat dinner and clean up before FHE. Usually we just meet with our FHE groups here at the center, but last night each "family" was assigned a real family in our branch to go visit. We had the opportunity of sharing a lesson and singing songs with one of these families, as well as playing a game and eating a treat! (The treats were incredible, I miss American desserts so much!) We had a lot of fun with the Peterson's and their children, and it hit me while we were there just how consistent the church is around the world, and that the spirit of the Lord really does reside in the homes of righteous members. I commented to Moon that I really did feel at home with them, it was a really great night. I love that we call one another brothers and sisters, because that's really what it begins to feel like.
Today I was just planning on studying, but Miriam and Moon convinced me it would be good to go out to West Jerusalem just for an hour or so and take a little break. I hesitantly agreed, my decision was made mostly because of the awesome mission we were set on. Today happens to be election day in Jerusalem, and about a week ago on one of our field trips Moon and I noticed the different party members standing around the city trying to persuade citizens to vote for their candidate. It was then that we got the idea to try and find election t-shirts for one of the candidates. We set out to West Jerusalem with this in mind, but after eating some brownie batter filled pastries and asking just about every t-shirt shop and person we could think of where to find these shirts with no positive feedback, we got a bit discouraged. We were about to hit up McDonalds and then head back to the center when I got an idea - you see we've kind of made friends with the workers in the camera shop we got followed in to by the creeper guy, and so I thought we could just ask the workers there if they could help us at all! At first they said they weren't sure where we should look, but then after thinking for a minute one of them suggested we head up the street about 5 minutes, and we'd find the headquarters for one of the candidates. We set out in to quite a storm, and on our way there I'm kind of surprised we weren't blown away, because it was pretty windy! Not too far away, however, we found the building he had sent us to, and although it looked kinda sketchy, we went in. I honestly thought by headquarters he meant a center to vote at, but as we walked in and saw all the people rushing around, we realized this was one of the candidates offices! We poked our head in to a few rooms and saw the man himself...this is the part where I'd put his name if I knew it...but unfortunately I don't, all I know is he's some Communist guy that is one of the worst candidates, you'd think this would make it worse but honestly I think it just improves the story. His secretary scurried out to meet us and said "Can I help you with something?" Moon asked her if there was any way we could buy one of their t-shirts and she looked back kind of sternly and said "Why?" I got kinda nervous until she came back with "...buy?! I give them to you free!" She went in to one of the side rooms and grabbed four t-shirts (Allison was awesome enough to come with us) and some posters too! You should see the cocked eye-brow on this guy, it's SWEET! We jumped up and down and yelped a little, and some random old guy growled back at us before laughing. We walked back outside and took a picture in front of the building, and as we were about to leave some random lady came up to us and said she was writing an article for an American Newspaper and wanted to know if she could take our picture. We agreed (hopefully we don't get in trouble for that one!). So look for us in the Lubbock Texas paper if you're there! It was getting really stormy at this point and the wind blew a huge piece of metal off the roof, it about hit us on the head - so we decided it was time to go. We walked back in the rain, stopping at McDonalds to get the biggest hamburger I've ever seen. The taxi got us back to the center just in time (we have to be back before dark), and even though I was gone way longer than the hour break I thought I deserved, it was most definitely worth the hastle.