Jordan

Jordan was so great! We got back into Israel yesterday afternoon to a campus full of people we don't know. Everyone that didn't go to Jordan left while we were gone which is so weird and I miss them all already! But I leave today after dinner, so I guess I can survive til then. Here's all the stuff we did in Jordan!

Saturday 7/3:
Today was a long day. We were up at 6am on the bus, started crossing the border around 8, finished crossing around 10:30, then headed on to our destinations. After getting almost no sleep the night before, it was a rough day to say the least. Our first stop was at Jerash, one of the
Decapolis cities back in the day. It was huge and there was tons of awesome sites to see.

Then we trekked over to the Jabbock River at a point that overlooked part of it. This was absolutely stunning! Here we read about Jacob wrestling with God. It would have been somewhere down by this river where Jacob spent the night alone on his way to meet his brother Esau, hoping to be received well. It was amazing to see the very place that this happened and to talk about all that it meant. Being there really makes it come alive.

From here we headed to Dibon, which was the capital of Moab and where the remains of King Mesha's palace are. After a long day we finally made it down to the hotel in Petra where we stayed for the night. I don't think I have ever anticipated sleep quite as much as I did tonight.

Sunday 7/4:

Today began with an awesome breakfast at our hotel before we went over to Petra and spent the whole morning being amazed by the city. Petra is seriously something everyone should see at some point in their lifetime. It is massive and absolutely amazing that all of these remains are still preserved. You can really feel what it would have been like when the wealthy Nabateans lived here. We walked a full 6 miles around Petra, including a long hike up and down a mountain to overlook the city from the "high place". We took a camel ride back to the treasury and then walked out of the city in the heat of the day. By the way, riding a camel is just as awesome as it sounds :)

We headed over to lunch from here (which was excellent!) and then went to overlook the Wadi Dana. Here we read about Moab's revolt against Israel (2 Kings 3). It is in this dry desert wadi that the Kings of Israel, Judah, and Edom would have been when the Lord sent them water. The King of Moab looked down in the morning and saw the red of the sunrise reflecting off of the water, assumed it was blood, and thought the Kings had killed each other. They approached the camps and, to their surprise, the armies rose up and overtook Moab. It was here that God provided for his people and delivered Israel once again, both from thirst and from war.

After this, we went over to Bozrah, the capital of Edom, which is basically a pile of rocks. However, it's a really really cool pile of rocks. We read a ton of scripture that really made us understand the city that once stood here and the people that inhabited it. We read the book of Obadiah, which is entirely about the people of Edom. This gave us so much insight as to who these people were, what they did, and what they were all about. At the end of the day we made our way up to Amman where we stayed at a pretty snazzy hotel and yet another awesome meal and called it a day.

Monday 7/5:
On our last day in Jordan we began at the historic site of Rabah, the ancient capital of Amon. We looked around the archeological museum there where we got to see some of the Dead Sea Scrolls (as well as some of the copper scrolls) and a skull with bore holes in it (apparently the Ammonites attempted brain surgery) along with other cool stuff. Then we headed over to Medeba where we saw the church with the ancient mosaic map of the land and ate our last amazing Jordanian meal.

The best part of today though was our final stop on Mt. Nebo. This is the last place Moses stood, as he looked out over the promised land before he died. We read Deuteronomy 34 as we looked out over Israel, as Moses would have. It was incredible to stand there thinking about how Moses was looking out over a hazy land, not knowing what awaited his people, but with a sense of joy that he was seeing with his own eyes all that God would give them. Paul (the leader of the trip and director of the school) talked about how we are all headed off to different places and we are all at points of our life that still hold uncertainty. But as Moses looked out on the barren land with confidence of God's goodness, so we should trust that God is good and he is leading us to our promised land. With a whole life ahead of me (of which I have no idea what's coming) it gives me such peace to know that I simply don't need to know what the future holds; God is leading me and He is good. Wherever I end up is where He wants me and there is nothing I can do to change it or mess it up, which is incredible! He guides us through the desert and brings us to the promised land and there is no sense in worrying about what is to come.

From Mt. Nebo we went over to the border and crossed back into Israel to end our trip to Jordan. It was an awesome time with great people and some amazing insight into the land of the Transjordan, which is so greatly intertwined into the Old Testament.