Songs of Ascent

I love it here.
That all being said, I miss everyone, too. I can’t express enough how thankful I am for my friends and family. On the morning of the 15th, Talisha took me to the St. Louis airport near her apartment. The first flight was on a very small plane and in no time, started descending to Newark.
I saw an interesting sight out of the window as we were descending. The reflection of light from the plane, running parallel to the clouds, was in the shape of a circular rainbow. In the middle, there was a shape of a dove, which was probably a shadow of the plane, but I still thought it looked cool.
The layover ended up being shorter than I thought. As I looked around at the crowd waiting for this huge flight, I was reminded of Bryan and Sara’s emails:

Dear Amy
I am sory to keep emailing. We just wanted to encourage you. Do not be scared about comming to Israel. It is a safe place. We live in a building owned by an Egyptian Coptic family. Their son lives on the second floor and on the third floor is their daughter. both their son and daughter have a son and daughter. Many people are scared of comming to Israel. Do not be scared the people here are decent people. There are unfortionatly bad people in any society. The bad people that are here get a large amount of press which makes the things that they do larger then they really are.
"Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds." Psalm 36:5-6.
“ As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people from this time forth and forever"
Psalm 125:1-2
Relax and enjoy your trip. I would suggest reading some Psalms. The Jews used to, and still some do read Psalms on the way up to Jerusalem. These Psalms were called the Psalms of Ascent. Also on the plane before the break of dawn many religious Jews will get up, and move to the back of the plane and pray. They should wear their Phalacteries, and Prayer shawl.

I read the Psalms on the plane. Lots of mention about Zion. The next thing I knew, it started to get dark.
Almost the whole plane was occupied by Jewish people, and there were very few people like me on the plane. But if this tells you anything about safety, the plane was full of young children with their parents.
The Jews prayed just as Bryan described. I was struck by their dedication. Since most of the flight was through the dark, it also went by very quickly! Everyone clapped when the plane touched down.
As soon as stepped into the airport, I smiled. Everything was beautiful and navigating around the airport was completely easy. In no time, I came to the passenger pick-up area and spotted Bryan.
Bryan and his friend Matt had water and bread to give me in the car. Right away, they were able to tell me much about Israel and Jerusalem. I was introduced the reality of life: the landlord of our apartment building had to be taken into the hospital. But his family had to drive him there because it was a Jewish ambulance/hospital. It didn’t matter that this was a Christian Arab man who wasn’t even a Muslim- it just mattered that this was an Arab man. He died within a few days.
Even though it is safe, if anything, there is much tension that exists between the Israelis and the Muslims. But there are also many exceptions to this...(see next blog)
The first thing I did when I got to the apartment was to walk down to the store with Sara and get some yogurt. (Thanks Tiff!)
Around 3, Bryan decided to take me to the old city, where I could exchange the money I had on me. Bryan pointed out the trustworthy shop keepers and the historical sites. It was amazing.

One shop that Bryan told me about that was a Biblically-based store. Anyone who came into the store could ask any questions they wanted about Judaism. I seized this opportunity! I was quite impressed by Moshe, the shop owner. He had a passion for Scripture. “Christians ask me why Jews do this and that and ask if it is a burden,” he said. “How can it be a burden to obey God?”
I also told him a bit about my studies and why I came.
As I left, he smiled, “Your paradigm will shift by the time you leave here.”

That is exactly what I was hoping for.