Already onto my 2nd blog post for being on this study abroad!  Woooo!! Haha yeah, so I don't know why but after doing that first blog post I just felt like they took too much time and were a lot of pressure to try to make interesting and blah blah, so I thought I'd just write emails, but that turned into nothing.  So here I am again for round two!

Right now I'm in the Galilee and it definitely deserves a blog post!  I feel so lucky to be here because this is where Christ was raised and where he was for part of his ministry, performing many miracles.  It is a beautiful place and if anything, being here has made the scriptures come more alive for me.    

I've been here for about a week now and am here for a couple more days and I have had the time of my life.  For starters, our hotel is right on the beach in En Gev and it overlooks the Sea of Galilee with the city of Tiberias across the water from us (which is an incredible view at night).  Here's a picture of the view from my back porch!

So as far as what we’ve done, we pretty much go on field trips for a day and then the next day we have our New Testament class for a couple hours and then the rest of the day free to ourselves (which consists of a lot of napping and sitting by the beach).  We’ve been on so many field trips that I don’t dare try to talk about all of them but here’s a few highlights and the significance of each:

Nazareth: Jesus grew up & later announced his Messiahship

Boat Ride on Sea of Galilee: many of Christ's teachings talk about fishing on the sea

Mt. of Beatitudes: Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples

Mt. Arbel: mostly just a good lookout point for the Galilee area

I had a slight freakout when I saw the bouganvilla!  Probably only my Dad will appreciate this picture.

Capernaum: home of Peter, Andrew, and possibly Matthew; Christ moved to Capernaum and performed many miracles here(example- Jesus healing the centurion’s servant)

Gamla: one of the Galilean cities destroyed by Romans during the First Jewish Revolt

Love finding pictures in the scriptures of places we're at!  Overlooking the Jezreel Valley at Megiddo.

Galilee Hike: One of my favorites from this trip.  Good conversation and one of the most gorgeous views I’ve ever seen.  There was a waterfall towards the end that we went swimming in and it was literally the most freezing thing I’ve ever been in.  I will be the first to admit that I went in solely to say that I did it.  (I better get a picture out of it!)

Tess and I trying to look hard-core, like we just finished up an archaeological dig.  (haha mostly just sick of taking normal pictures)

View from the church we went to in Tiberias!  Can you believe that I got to go to church overlooking the Sea of Galilee??  They have a small branch there that we went to that is in a house that was remodeled to fit their needs as a branch.  So weird to think back to the views in sacrament meetings in America of the white walls after having the old city in Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee here!!

I never realized how lucky I had it watching conference with no problems at home!  Because of the time difference here, we watched the Sunday morning session here on Sunday night(not our Sabbath) at 7 our time and this is what we came up with to watch it.  Besides the spotty internet connection that made it about half an hour longer than it should have to watch it, it was an incredible experience.  Outside, in chairs and hammocks watching conference being projected onto the lifeguard shed.  Surrounded by palm trees, the stars above us, and overlooking the Sea of Galilee (can see on the left side of the picture). You cannot even believe how excited we all were when one of the speakers mentioned the hills of Galilee in their talk.  Such a cool experience to listen to talks about Christ near where he taught.  An unforgettable experience for sure!


I feel so lucky to be here and quite honestly do not want to leave to go back to Jerusalem yet!!  I hope you are all doing well wherever you are! (And are having as good of weather as I am lucking out on this year;/)