A Weekend with President Uchtdorf

I am sitting here in the Jerusalem Center right now feeling extremely blessed for the events that have happened in the past two days. I can't believe my time here is drawing to a close and one thing is for sure- every day here is a little more spectacular than the last.

On Thursday, we were told some crazy news that none of us could believe- that President Uchtdorf would be here at the Jerusalem Center the next morning and staying for awhile! If you don't already know, President Uchtdorf is the coolest, cutest, most inspiring general authority who tells amazing stories in all his talks. I've always been a big fan of him and have loved every single one of his talks. Obviously, I was stoked and it was hard to focus on the finals I had to take the next day. Fast forward to lunch the next day, after my New Testament final and before my last final, when I was at the salad bar with my hands shaking because President Uchtdorf was right next to me getting salad. I was so excited to be in this great man's presence, who I had seen so many times broadcast on TV or the internet for conference and devotionals. Here he was, in his business casual Friday clothes with his adorable wife eating lunch at the Oasis, where I eat all 3 meals every day. We were all super nervous being around him at first, but we loosened up a little over time. After lunch we took our last final and headed to the service project in the garage, where we made hygiene kits for donation. We do this every Friday and blast music and have a dance party at the same time, and surprisingly we get a lot of kits made. It is so much fun! President Uchtdorf even made an appearance, going around to all the tables where we had assembly lines and stopping to help a little at my table. The one thing he said to me the whole time he was here was: "I like your party" hahaha I'll take it! His wife was super friendly too and thanked us for our service. We always end our service parties with everyone dancing to Gangham style which the service couples think is so funny.

After the service activity some friends and I headed out to the Old City and did some shopping and ate at our favorite falafel and schawarma place called David's Tower. We then went to a lookout point I had found with some other friends the other day which has an incredible view of the Old City and Dome of the Rock, and you can see the Jerusalem Center just to the right of the Dome of the Rock!

The Old City just never gets old!

Nothing like some good schawarma!

The Jewish Quarter of the Old City is so beautiful!

Then we met everyone else down at the Western Wall. I met Elder and Sister Porter of the seventy who were there with my professor Brother Judd and they were super friendly and loved talking with me and my friends! We had come to the Western Wall on Friday night one of the first weeks we were here and I loved it then, but it was a lot more meaningful this time because I understood the history behind it and the Jewish people who gather there every Friday night to welcome in Shabbat (Sabbath). This time, I knew a few of the Hebrew songs girls at the wall were singing and dancing to and I joined in! They were really welcoming to me and the other JC girls and we had such a fun time dancing and singing with them. I couldn't help but stare in awe at how absolutely beautiful they all are and how devote they are to their religion. I made my way up to the wall and was able to place my hand on it for the last time, thinking about how rough the Jewish past was and how faithful they still are. I thought about how absolutely incredible this place is and how I want to be able to remember this moment so well that I can relive it over and over again during the rest of my life. I finally peeled myself away from the wall and ended up in group of JC girls who were talking to this beautiful Jewish girl named Shira. We found out that she was 18 years old (although she looked way older) and that she was an orthodox Jew born and raised in Jerusalem. She told us all about her culture and religion eagerly and we loved listening and asking her questions. I would relate it to a Jewish version of the LDS 1st discussion and I loved being on the other end and just learning about and appreciating her beliefs. We all especially loved asking about their marriage customs- in her Orthodox beliefs a girl is not allowed to even touch a boy until he puts a ring on her finger for engagement! I respect that so much and it is such a contrast from American ways. She was so so sweet and even gave us her email and told us if we come to Jerusalem again she would love to have us stay with her and her family. I've come to realize that my favorite way of learning about this great land is by talking with the people here and making friendships. People are always eager to share their beliefs and customs and I love learning about them.

I think this might be my favorite picture I've taken of Jerusalem. We made friends with a really nice Jewish man earlier this week who showed us this viewpoint. It has the Israeli flag, Dome of the Rock, the Jerusalem Center just to the right of the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall, and the crowd of Jewish people gathered to welcome in Shabbat at the Western Wall.

That night at the JC was one for the books. For one thing, President Uchtdorf was staying there so we were all hoping he would walk past us or come hang out with us haha. Well that didn't happen. But what did happen was that our Ancient Near East professor, Prof. Stratford had a birthday party that we threw for him in the student lounge. We have grown so close to him and love him so much and he loves to hang out with us. In class a few days before he made costume assignments for all of the guys, originating on the idea that he really wanted trained monkeys at his party but decided it would be easier to instead assign a couple of the guys to dress up as trained circus monkeys then assigning all the other guys to dress up as other things that were really fitting to their personalities. We had a dim-witted clown, a sad clown, a trained monkey, a general authority, Malfoy, Justin Bieber, Toucan Sam, Kronk and Cuzco, someone who dressed up as Stratford, a cow,  Romeo, Dwight, and Smoky the Bear just to name a few. We put tables together and made a catwalk and each of them modeled. It was soooo funny, especially because we all know each other really really well and they were all comfortable being completely in character and they dressed up really well. Stratford loved it. The funniest part is that the sad clown (Hunter) ran into President Uchtdorf in the hallway with his sad clown face paint on and President Uchtdorf asked him about it, and he tried to explain that it was for his professor's birthday party, then he was like, "How old is he turning?!?" and Hunter was like, "Uhhh probably 45?" Haha that's one way to make a good first impression on a general authority! We also had everyone's baby pictures playing on the TV at the party and it was really funny guessing everyone because we are all so close here. Man I'm going to miss these people. Also not to be overlooked is the crazy amount of treats we bought at "Arab costco" for the party. It was a good night for sure!

Justin Bieber

John "Romeo"

The birthday boy himself, Prof. Stratford!

Story: we made an effigy on this T-shirt at Galilee and were going to burn it but we wanted to show it to Stratford first and he wasn't at his apartment. So we kept it and gave it to him at his birthday party. He secretly loves it.

Saturday morning (the Sabbath) was district conference for all LDS church members in Israel. We could all fit into the auditorium and I was in the choir. It was really REALLY exciting knowing that President Uchtdorf was speaking to us! When he walked in everyone stood up in reverence and he came and sat in a seat just 5 or 6 feet in front of me facing me! I'm glad I was in the choir because I was in the very front row. The choir sang a prelude song and I just started bawling during it the Spirit was so strong. During the next song we sang as a congregation I smiled and looked up at President Uchtdorf and he made eye contact and smiled back at me! Ah I was just so excited he was there! The talks were absolutely amazing, since it was district conference there were two hours of speakers including Sister Porter, Elder Porter, Sister Uchtdorf, and Elder Uchtdorf along with 3 local leaders. I loved every talk and loved the messages they shared. In President Uchtdorf's talk, he spoke about a lot of things but one thing that stood out to me was that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the one thing that can bring peace to the world. That's why it's so important to spread it. He aimed a lot of his message at just us BYU Jerusalem students and talked about the importance of bringing everything we've experienced here back home and sharing it- the testimony of Christ and the love for all of His children and their different cultures and religions. He told a cute story about a little boy who was shy who said about his classmates, "If they only knew me, they would like me". He told about how true that is for all people, which is why we should get to know all sorts of different people- because in effect it will spread peace with our love for all different people. I know that that is true because I've found a deep love for all the many people I've met in the city of Jerusalem as well as the people I've met here at the JC- I was able to develop a deep love and appreciation for all of them. Anyways, I'll get off my soapbox now. District conference was great.

After conference, I headed out to the Garden Tomb with some friends. I go there almost every Sabbath, besides the ones I go to the Garden of Gethsemane. I've decided that the Garden Tomb is my favorite place in the entire city of Jerusalem because of the peace I feel there every time I go. This time, as we were making the 20 minute trek there, we got caught in a downpour! I love the rain so I didn't mind but we huddled under one of few trees in East Jerusalem and waited it out. At the Garden Tomb, one of my favorite things to do besides singing hymns and reading my scriptures is talking to the other people there because people come from all over the world to see it. We talked to some people from California and the sweet elderly women from the Galilee branch who had come for conference. I just love going to the Garden Tomb and hearing everyone's stories as to how they got there- some people waited their whole life to come and I get to go every week!

The Garden Tomb! My favorite place in Jerusalem

At the Jerusalem Center tonight, we had an "Upper Room" devotional kind of thing in the auditorium where they set up cushions and tables like the last supper would have been set up like. We were shocked to find out that President Uchtdorf was on the program to speak- just for us JC students! I had never felt so privileged in my life! I got to hear him speak in person twice in one day! We heard from two of our professors who talked about the last supper and bore their testimonies and had spectacular musical performances from some of my friends. Then President Uchtdorf talked about the last supper and bore his extremely strong testimony of Christ, His sacrifice, His resurrection, and His love for us. He got choked up and started to cry 3 different times in bearing his testimony of Christ's love for His children. It was absolutely incredible and something I will never ever forget! There is nothing quite like hearing from a prophet of the Lord testify of Christ in the city where Christ did so many important things and ultimately died, but was resurrected. President Uchtdorf is only the third member of the first presidency to be in Jerusalem in the last 35 years, so I know that this was a really rare, memorable, and historical event and I am so thankful that I got to be here for it! I truly feel so so blessed all the time here, and it just keeps getting better!

Bethlehem

A few days after we got back from Turkey, we took a field trip to Bethlehem! The Bethlehem field trip was one of my favorites by far. Bethlehem is just 5 miles south of Jerusalem and is currently part of the West Bank. It also is the location of Christ's birth- one of my favorite New Testament stories. We went to the the remains of the Herodian first, Herod's summer palace. Then we went to the super old and famous Church of the Nativity! It has the grotto where Christ is believed to have been born! It definitely wasn't what I had always imagined the birthplace of Christ to be- a humble stable- but it definitely could have used to be that way before a church was built around it. I loved entering the grotto and sitting where Mary could have sat as she brought the baby Jesus into the world. President Obama came to this church just 3 days later during his visit to Israel!

Entering the grotto at the Church of the Nativity

This star is said to mark the exact spot Jesus was born

This is the grotto where Christ is believed to have been born!

Next we ate lunch in a shepherd's tent restaurant where we all ate way too many delicious whole wheat pitas.

Then we went to a few churches commemorating the events that happened at the shepherd's field at the time of Christ's birth- an angel appeared to the shepherds and told them of the birth of Jesus and told them to go see him, then a choir of angels sang. Every year of seminary in Washington I was one of those angels in the nativity we put on, so I loved going to to see the places believed to be the same shepherd's field! The churches were absolutely beautiful and some of my favorite that I've seen on this trip.

This church reminded me of Disneyland with so many bright colors! It was so different than any other church I've seen.  It might be my favorite church so far on the trip.

Another church had BEAUTIFUL paintings that I admired for a long time.

The paintings seemed to just pop out of the wall!

Shepherd's field at one of the churches we visited with Hannah and Sierra. That's pretty much what it would have looked like!

My favorite part of the day was going to a real shepherd's field and having a devotional and testimony meeting with my class. It was cool seeing Bethlehem as the backdrop of the grassy hills and imagining the events that took place at a spot just like it. I loved how peaceful the Bethlehem trip was and especially loved going to the places where such amazing and world-changing events took place.

Shepherd's field just outside of Bethlehem

Turkish Delight

I usually have three options when it comes to free time: do something memorable, do my homework, or catch up on blogging. And sometimes I sleep too. You can guess which order my priorities are in... do something memorable trumps everything else and I squeeze homework in when I can. Usually my eyelids start to close at some point and then next thing I know it's 6:30 in the morning and I'm miraculously up and starting another adventure. Needless to say, life here is crazy busy and I've neglected this blog and I apologize for it. Here's a list of the things I've done in the past month that I haven't blogged about:

• the rest of the Turkey trip
• Bethlehem field trip
• some friends and I spent a day stalking President Obama on his visit to Jerusalem
• snorkeling in the Red Sea
• Jerusalem Old City field trips
• Holy Week
• Easter at the Garden Tomb
• field trip to the separation wall
• all 11 days of being in Galilee, including a bunch of field trips all over northern Israel, rafting on the Jordan River, hiking in the Golan Heights, having bonfires on the lake, watching general conference on the shores of Galilee, seeing Tiberias... and a bunch of other things but we'll get to that later!

I'll go ahead and point out the obvious: life here is pretty dang cool. I'm at the point where seeing something amazing is just a part of daily life that I expect when I wake up in the morning. I wish I could say that for the rest of my life! I decided to dedicate the rest of this blog post to some highlights of Turkey, and hopefully I'll catch up on the other things in the near future.

(I blogged about the first few days of Turkey already here) We took off in our bus early in the morning down the European coast of Turkey on the Mediterranean Sea, and it was sunny, blue and absolutely beautiful. We had lunch Gallipolli and stopped at the battlegrounds of the Battle of Gallipolli for a devotional, then continued down the coast. The Turkey trip was full of long bus rides that I absolutely loved because we got to see beautiful scenery from the comfort of our rockstar tour bus, relax, and catch up on the sleep we never seemed to have enough time for. We took a ferry across the Dardanelles, crossing from the small European part of Turkey to the much larger Asian part of the country.

Gallipolli

Ferry ride across the Dardanelles, Europe to Asia!

We then went to Troy, and our sweet and adorable tour guide named Negep was shocked when we pulled up because the one cool thing to see there- the giant wooden Trojan horse that you can go inside of- was under construction and completely covered in a black tarp. While it was a little disappointing, it was actually pretty funny that the one cool thing to see was under construction. We of course had to have a tour of a bunch of archaeological ruins of Troy, during which I found the most entertainment in making friends with a big snail.

Behind us is what was supposed to be the Trojan horse. You can see our disappointment. Negep is the one behind me with the sunglasses (we were all secretly in love with him).

Just practicing being a safari tour guide with my pet snail

 Our hotel was on the beach of the Dardanelles strait (which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Mediterranean Sea) and it had a picture perfect dock, beautiful beach, and we pretty much had the whole resort to ourselves. My roommate Erica and I felt like we won the lottery because we got the room with a balcony with the best view of the beach and pool. That night was full of hanging out on the dock, taking cheesy pictures on the dock, watching the sunset, stargazing at the end of the dock and playing on the beach.

On our awesome balcony, and obviously so excited about it!

The next day, we took off down the coast of the Mediterranean and our first stop was a beautiful archaeological site called Assos, which was a town that St. Paul visited. The sea was SO unbelievably blue!

Athena temple at Assos. The island in the distance is Lesbos, which is a part of Greece and the origin of the word "lesbian".

Our next site was Pergamum, which was an ancient Greek city on top of a huge hill. We rode a tram to the top and it was suuuuper windy! It was stunning up there though, with tons of wildflowers and greenery. It is home to the steepest ancient theater in the world, with a really great view of the hills and countryside.

Hair in the face during every picture was unavoidable

Greek theater at Pergamum

The hotel for the next two nights was on a really nice beach on the Mediterranean, and we all had a ton of fun playing games and talking on it. The next day of the trip we went to Ephesus, which is the remains of a huge Greek and Roman city that was in the Ionian League and where the apostle Paul lived for 2 years, spreading Christianity (the book of Ephesians in the New Testament comes from here). It was also the site of the famous Temple of Artemis, previously one of the seven wonders of the ancient world but nothing of it remains.

Recognize this? It's the goddess Nike, you can see the Nike swoosh.

Roman toilets

Library of Celsus

Huge Roman theater where Paul taught

Cat napping. I secretly love all the cats that hang out in the Middle East.

We also went to the ruins of a beautiful little city called Priene. We acted out a play in a little theater there and just had some chill time to absorb the beautiful landscape. We found a cool turtle there who turned out to not be the biggest fan of being held!

Priene

The next day was super rainy, so I didn't take a lot of pictures of the sites we went to. At this point, the trip was wearing us out and we all pretty much just wanted to be on the bus where it was dry which was lucky because we did a lot of driving that day. Sardis was cool though, it was ruins of another ancient Roman city.

This is inside of the Roman gymnasium- where boys would wrestle in the nude with olive oil all over their bodies. Obviously, the boys in our class had to reenact this (with clothes) so the girls did too.

That afternoon, we arrived at Bursa which is a modern city in Turkey. We went to the Ulu Cami or Grand Mosque there which is huge with 20 domes and still in use, and then had some free time to roam the giant bazaar. Some of us went back to the mosque during call to prayer and got to watch the prayers inside the mosque happen! It was such a cool experience being in the small women's section right behind the women praying to Allah. The women were super friendly to us although they were talking our ear off in Turkish and we didn't understand a word of it. They even invited a few of the BYU girls to pray with them which was really cool to watch, especially in such a grand and beautiful mosque. Islam is the prevalent religion in Turkey, and it was cool to see their worship in action.

Grand Mosque in Bursa

Bazaar in Bursa

Evening prayer in the Grand Mosque

The next day, we went to Nicea and saw the church where the Council of Nicea happened, which is a very important event in the history of Christianity because Constantine gathered Christian leaders who established the Nicene Creed, establishing the belief that God and Jesus are one in the same.

Reenacting the Council of Nicea at the Nicene church

We then took a ferry back to the European side of Turkey, and drove back to Istanbul. We almost didn't make it in time before the Hagia Sophia closed, but we luckily got there just in time to see the largest christian church in the world for over a thousand years! It's definitely something everyone should try to go see in their lifetime.

Hagia Sophia

That night we had a really fun dinner at a fish restaurant before heading off to the airport, which even had live Turkish fiddlers. The fish was great and I might have accepted the challenge of sucking out and eating the eye haha. It was a great end to a fabulous trip, Turkey certainly was delightful!