Egypt, Day One!

Ok guys, I am back! Yay for blogging! Sorry, I have had a little bit of a bloggers block as of late. I have decided that I will record my Egypt trip day by day. So I will write about each day of my trip each day of this week, that way I won’t be overwhelmed and that way you won’t be either! Soo let’s get started. Day one of our Egypt trip was spent mainly on the bus, yay bus although thankfully our whole day wasn’t spent just sitting on the bus, we were able to stop at a few places. The first of which was Tel Beer Sheba. People, we are talking about the Beer Sheba found in the Bible, that’s right. It was awesome, really a cool place. I got to see the well that was there anciently and I also saw a replication of the altar that was found there. After we went to Tel Beer Sheba we stopped at Tel Arad. This Tel was awesome too! Just a side note, a tel is a built up city. At tel Arad we saw the temple ruins of ancient times. It was awesome. I got to see the huge sacrificial altar as well as the place where the holy of holies was kept. That was my favorite part of the Tel experience.

So after we saw those sites we journeyed down into the Sinai desert. After a little bit of driving we stopped on the side of the road to have a “sand dune experience.” It was sooo great. That was one of my favorite parts of the Egypt trip. It started off with a hike up this hill to get to this one sand dune haha, everyone was sooo excited. I have always taken the sand dunes for granted since I have gone to them since I was a little girl. It was so fun to see how much fun people had playing in the sand and jumping off the sand hills, one of my favorite things to do. I loved seeing everyones reactions. After we played for a little bit our tour guide person took us to this valley at the bottom of the sand dune. We all sat in a circle and he explained how we were going to be given a paper with a question on it. He said we would be given the paper and then be directed to seek a private place in the valley or on the sides of the mountains to be alone and ponder, after a little while he would ring a bell meaning we could read the paper and answer the question. So he sent us on our way and I found a spot on the side of the mountain by a rocky outcropping that faced the other mountain, since we had been sitting in a valley there were mountains all around. (sandy mountains that is) We got to sit there for quite a while just thinking and pondering, it was wonderful. It was sooo nice to have complete silence to be able to think about Heavenly Fathers amazing creations. At the Jerusalem center we are always loud, we are always interacting so it was really a great reprieve. After sitting for a while the bell rang and we read our papers, the paper was a passage from the Book of Mormon where it says that Nephi and his brothers journeyed by the Red Sea, their path would have been right by where we were located. As I read that passage I could envision Nephi and his brothers walking around the bend off to the left, I could see them journeying across the harsh desert landscape, it really made their journey a reality to me. It made me realize how much faith Nephi must have had in his Heavenly Father to not have murmured when he was act to leave his home and when he was asked to go back and get the plates. That was not an easy thing that the Lord had asked of him, it isn’t surprising that Laman and Lemuel complained but it is so surprising that Nephi didn’t complain. The desert in Sinai is barren with the exception of a few Oasis’s which are spread far apart. Nephi had to have solid faith in God in order to so willingly obey His command; He knew that Heavenly Father would deliver him. I hope that I can develop faith that is as strong as Nephi’s so that I will be willing to do whatever my Heavenly Father asks of me even if it seems impossible.

After we had our alone time the bell rang and we all gathered together at 4 different fires where we sung a hymn and went around the circle sharing our impressions and our thoughts. It was dark by this time and so we loaded into our buses and drove a few more minutes to our lodging for the night. We stayed at something called a Kibbutz. A kibbutz is a Jewish community which is self run by everyone living there. Everyone there takes turns cooking, cleaning the main eating hall, etc. Also, all the money that you make gets put together and pays for everyone’s needs; it is basically like living the law of consecration. A lot of the people there were from America and barely any were from Israel. It was a really interesting concept and I am glad we got to become familiar with it or at least learn about it, I had never known about a kibbutz before so it was an eye opening experience.

Well that is day one of Egypt, such a long post!! Enjoy! :)