1st Sunday

Quite a day today. We left Tiberias, Israel this morning and crossed into Jordan. It took a little more than two hours to get through the border crossing. Off the bus and through passport control in Israel. Back on the bus. Off the bus to ensure we had paid our exit tax. Back on the bus. Stay on while passports are checked at the Jordan border. Off at passport control. Take your luggage through security. On the bus and away.

The Jordan countryside is rugged and largely undeveloped. It wasn’t hard to imagine it as it was in Jesus’ time. There weren’t that many buildings, and you could see numerous caves that could easily have housed families.

Our main stop around noon was quite a surprise. I had never heard of Jerash before and wasn’t overly thrilled to be seeing some more Roman ruins. Boy was I wrong. The ruins of the city were incredible. Several of the more traveled members of the group said there were significantly more ruins to see here than in Rome (with the exception of the Coliseum). Jerash may be one of the top two most complete Roman city ruins left in the world. Haidrain's gate. The Temple of Zeus. The Temple of Artemis. The Cardo Maximus (the main north-south road). The main east-west road (I don’t remember it’s name). The theater. The hippodrome. STUNNING!

There is a drought in Jordan. The tour guide said they should have already received 50% of their annual rainfall but are very behind this year. Crops look, from the bus, to be doing well enough, but the concern is for water to drink and use later this year. The tour guide said they currently have water pumped/turned on to their house every seven days and if the rainfall doesn’t catch up it will likely be every ten days this summer. He was concerned.

Our religious stop was at the Jabbok river where Jacob wrestled the angel. It was not a beautiful place physically. People have thrown lots and lots of trash on the banks of the river. The river wasn’t large, maybe 20 yards across and not more than a few feet at its deepest points. Dr. Jackson read the Genesis 32:22-32 passage, reflected on our own wrestling with God and the fact that our future can be different than the past, and we shared in Communion.