We met 20 students at the YMCA carillon on Sunday.  They loved the view, sang in the chapels, and Aaron Hart sat down and played the carillon like a pro.  

Kela, Rachel, Sarah, Essie

Stetson, Daniel, Jaxson

After carillon fun, we parked at Mamilla and had a great day in the Old City—shopping around here and there. We ran into many different groups of students on their day off, had a delicious falafel at the place at the fork in the road in the Muslim quarter, took a few students to the Little Western Wall, went to Shabban’s and got baklava.

Conner Jones, Aaron Hart, Charley Davis

Shabban

Knocked on Santa’s door, and he welcomed us in to his workshop!  Such a ham!  We talked about our visit to his place planned for November 30.  Fun!  

Issa Kassissieh, Ho-Ho-Holy Land Santa

We went to the Latin Patriarchate and met Abdel Maseeh Younan who let Jim try both the Oberlinger tracker organ that just arrived about 6 months ago from Dormition Abbey (which is under renovation), and the big 1933 Italian organ in the loft that has been changed many times.  It has a crazy gear-shift lever thing installed, and the only way Jim could get any stops to work was to use this. But you can go from pp to fff using the “stick.”  Abdel said maybe Jim could play a concert there sometime.  We’ll see. 

Note "gear shift" to the right of the keyboards

Jim went back to the carillon to play for 40 CEO’s from YMCA’s in the USA, mostly in the South.  He played lots of hymns they would know, plus Christmas and Easter hymns.  They loved it.  Jim went to Jaffa Gate, checked out the light show at the Tower of David; and went to the museum at Christ Church (Anglican) that has a very interesting exhibit about their outreach to Jewish people who want to believe in Jesus as Messiah. 

We went over to Redeemer Lutheran Church where Jim finally got to play the Schuke organ on his own.  Wonderful acoustics, and a light tracker action. 

We went to St. Helen’s Cistern which is HUGE and acoustically reverberant.  Interesting! 

Ended up at the Mahmoud’s bead shop (called The Arches), David Street #37, which was really fun.  Had slices of pepperoni pizza (really good) at the Jaffa (Yafa) Pizza shop.  Another fine day! 

Mahmoud

Tours this week included people from all over: Paradise, UT, South Carolina, friends from Palo Alto, CA now living in Alpine, UT; 5 Iraqi Jews, and 2 lovely guests from Russian living just up the street in French Hill. It was their first time coming to the Center although they've lived there for 26 years!

A few pictures of the wonderful doorways and windows in Jerusalem!