Life of Fei: Jerusalem, Israel

After visiting Bethlehem, which was amazing and you can read all about it here we went to the Old City to visit the church they claim Jesus was crucified at. We also visited the Western Wall. You can also read a story I found (relating to the Church of the Nativity) a bit funny here which is about the various clergymen fighting with broomsticks over which areas were theirs to clean at the Church of the Nativity. In this portion of my blog we visit the Old City, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Western Wall. Our tour guide was very brisk so we did not have much time to look at things which was very unfortunate. It does give us a great excuse to return someday though!
   In order to get to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Western Wall we had to walk into the city. We entered through the Jaffa gate and exited through the Dung gate. This was exciting to me because I have read about these specific gates in the scriptures! The dung gate's name always made me chuckle. We walked through the Muslim quarter and Christian quarter. We walked around parts of the Via Dolorosa and also saw a man dressed as Jesus walking behind us!
       The Church of the Holy Sepulcher has several faiths sharing the same church: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglican and Protestant Christians although the latter two do not have any permanent areas in the church. The church was very interesting to visit. It reminded me alot of the Vatican in that people were worshiping things and statues instead of the one true God. They were kissing and laying on the stone that Jesus was said to have been laid on after the crucifixion. I liked visiting the church and just realizing what Jesus did for me so that I could be saved from death in hell. It gave me a great sense of gratefulness. I know this is probably not the spot where he was crucified because the scriptures say it was outside the city and this was inside, but it was still neat to see even though it made me a bit sad.
   Lastly we saw the Western Wall. I was looking forward to this most out of everything we saw on our trip. For years (and this is a super geeky admission) I have watched a web cam pointed at the Western Wall and seen people go and pray at the wall. We had to go through security to enter the Wall area and after we went through an orthodox Jewish man started yelling at the security guard for some unknown reason. We kept walking (not wanting to see anything scary!!) and after coming out of the tunnel we saw the Wall. It was amazing. Its huge! The wall has one area for men and a smaller area for women divided by a metal wall to separate them.It was neat to see these people earnestly praying for their messiah to return. It was sad too. They were very emotional. I was struck when I saw some young soldiers with large guns strapped to their sides walk up to the wall to pray. Sonia had a prayer she wanted to put in the wall so we found a spot (every spot was crammed with prayers) she stuck hers in and caused about 10 others to fall to the ground in the process :). I loved visiting the wall and wished I had more time just to sit, observe the people and pray. I loved Jerusalem and hope this was not my last visit there.