Petra Update

This Monday morning we are headedback to Petra! We had a lovely first visit yesterday late afternoon. Unfortunately we don't have wireless access at this hotel, so this will be photo free until we reach a different situation.
Briefly, Sabbath was another answer to prayer. We found the Adventist Church in Amman and stayed for the English Church guest luncheon. There was a whole contingent of guest workers from the Phillipines and Kenya and other English language countries who worship together. They gave us a wonderful set of musical specials. The Madaba Plains Project (MPP) personnel returned to their own meal. But two special people in my life were there!
1. Lloyd Willis, Prof. of OT at Southwester Adventist. He was my "Preceptor" at Vincent Hill School, India, when I graduated from academy 44 years ago. We hadn't encountered each other ever since.
2. Jony Hajaj, English pastor. Jony was the only pastor in Iraq before the 2003 war began. And his last sermon in Baghdad was the same Sabbath I preached my pre-war sermon at Milton! For years I havewondered what he chose as his verse. Turns out it was Jn 14:1-3 "Let not your heart be troubled." He and I will now keep in touch.
Vonnie and I visited the archaeological museum in Amman that afternoon, plus the amazing ruins that surround it. Then we hired a private car to take us to Petra on Sunday. Now we're working on finding a wife for our driver Aymon :-) . He is a good, good person. Such adventures he took us on. (A Bedouin cave merchant!)
Then it was Petra. Our hotel. The entrance to the Siq. The walk through the narrow approach. The amazing rock tombs. The constant push for donkey or camel rides. We ended our day greeted and treated by an archaeological couple from Brown University who drove us to our hotel through the Bedouin village. They even know Doug Clark! They are excavating an amazing temple.
Now off to some more adventures.
Loved your comments!
We just had an emergency out the door from the hotel's computers. A young soldier collapsed in a seizure! They lifted him into a van and rushed him to a clinic 10 min away. They suspect heat injury. Sooooo dangerous. And a reminder to us to be careful!

From Umayri to John the Baptist

Thirty minutes after falling asleep, the phone rang. Three of our four pieces had been found and awaited my signature in the lobby. The joy of seeing luggage again. The shock that Vonnie's bag was still missing, with ALL our toiletries. BUT, there was a note promising it was on its way - with a new tracking number. There's still hope.
Morning started early with breakfast and meeting our driver, Moustaffa. I showed him our first goal on Google Earth: Tal al'-Umayri - the first dig we wanted to join. We bravely started out to find it. When we attempted to duplicate what we saw on the screen, we got totally lost. All the back roads; all the stops to ask if anyone had heard of it; all the shaking of heads. We DID find Tal Hesban, another Madaba Plains Project run by Andrews University. It was of great interest, especially with the sign directing us to the plastered wall of a reservoir that many think is the same as the pools of Hesban mentioned by Solomon. But we did not yet find Umayri! Until a Bedouin in a store suggested it was on a hill behind a service station. More time wandering. Finally, Moustaffa pulled over to where a Bedouin was selling fresh cucumbers on the side of the road. Yes, he knew where it was. For two Jordanian Dinars, he guided us to where his son was assisting with the dig! And there we found Doug Clark and Larry Herr, along with Henning Guldhammer's nephew, who is the official videographer for the dig.
Moustaffa then took us to Madaba (try looking for the plains of Medaba in the Bible) where Vonnie visited the little shops and I went to the museums. We also saw a church with a mosaic map of Jordan from the 500s. Wow! It was discovered under a plaster floor in 1999 and revealed a more ancient traditional site for Jesus' baptism by John. Mosaic work is a tradition in the area being carried on by a government supported shop for disabled ladies. We loved visiting a few of them, but couldn't afford their amazing work (6 months on ONE piece!)
Mount Nebo was next. Long revered as a holy place because Moses died there and was taken to heaven by Michael, it offered a wonderful view over the Jordan Valley toward haze-concealed Jerusalem. It really got both of us to thinking of what it meant to be in the same spot, ourselves longing to see a vision of the final Promised Land.
Once in the car, we switched back and forth, down, down, down into a barren landscape. It is hard to imagine the Children of Israel descending into this burning wilderness (it was something over 100 degrees!) towards the Jordan River.
Getting to the river is complicated because it is now the border between Israeli controlled Palestinian West Bank and Jordan. It is a militarized zone and people aren't allowed to approach it on their own. However, there is a bus for tourists, and then a guided path that let's folk actually get into the water.
Guarded by a Jordanian soldier, it reminded us that even John had Roman soldiers around his work. And it also reminded us that when Jesus came down, normal life was happening all around and many missed the eternal event that happened. So life continues today: "normalcy" can blind us to the extraordinary of God's daily actions.
With our driver Moustaffa's permission, we invited a young Russian couple to ride with us back up the hill to Amman. Although much improved, this is the same road I took in 1964 when I returned from a week in Jerusalem. How long ago that seems.
Moustaffa then took us to a dessert stand and we enjoyed a sweet topping of sugar and pistachios over melted goat cheese. It was delicious!
Now we're looking forward to Sabbath morning at the Adventist Church in Amman. (Vonnie still has no fresh clothes as we await her bag.)

Tourists at Ajlun and Jaresh

This afternoon we did it! Same old clothes, but we hired a driver who drove us north to Ajlun and the ancient castle pictured here, and also to Jaresh, an amazing collection of Greek, Roman, Christian and Muslim monumental ruins. In fact, when we visited the museum, their collection included stone implements from the days before the locals learned to work with metal!
Our wonderful guide reminded us that Elijah the Tishbite grew up just over the next hill in Tishbeh! And he also shared a local oral history that Jesus came to Ajlun to visit his mother Mary after feeding the 5,000 and casting the demons out of the two Gadarenes, but then being rejected for causing the death of so many swine. At the top of this wonderful hill, the earliest ruins were of a Byzentine ((AD 321 - 621) Church, followed by several forts, one of which was to counter the Crusaders on the other side of the Jordan River.
Apparently our guide, now a man of some years, had helped excavate this and other sites and really absorbed the history. How fun it was to listen to him describe how this fort could send color coded signals to Jerusalem by mixing different minerals into the fires.
Jaresh was also damaged beyond repair by a major earthquake in the 800s. Yet it is fascinating. At one point a mute with a rather distorted face befriended us and showed us that he could make one of the 30 feet tall pillars actually totter enough for us to see movement in the tiny lever he used, and feel it at the tips of our fingers in one of the joints! Vonnie decided to move back at first, but eventually felt the movement herself. This same mute showed us a local plant that looked just like the plants carved at the top of the so-called Corinthian columns.
Then a 15 year old came along and took over as our guide, telling us in English, "He is not speaking any language." I tried to teach him the English word "mute". He then showed us an amazing mosaic floor in an old church, a Greek theater, and a temple to Artemis (Venus).
Our wonderful driver, Mustaffah, took us to a restaurant much less expensive than the hotel and we enjoyed our fill with pita breads, hummus, cucumber salad and kebab.
When back to the hotel, we discovered our bags wouldn't be delivered until midnight tonight. And we've promised to meet our driver at 7:30 for Friday's adventures.