We finally took down all the Christmas trees and decorations at the Center and in our apartment. It was January 11th, after all! Now the gallery looks so plain. 

We were invited with the faculty and other service couples to a dinner at Ima restaurant in West Jerusalem. It was a farewell dinner for the Earnshaws.  We are going to miss them bigtime! They are such wonderful people, so knowledgeable about the Holy Land, and always upbeat and helpful. Their replacements are Mark and Mary Ellen Rosen from Sandy, UT. They had a lot to learn before Mark and Marvel left (but did just fine)!

Huntsmans, Earnshaws, Barkers

Eran Hayet

Earnshaws with Mervat (Chef) and Firas (Maintenance and Housekeeping)

January 11, the students arrived in three shifts. As they left the buses, some were wide-eyed and eager to see where "home" would be for the next 15 weeks. Some were so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open. Right away they are taken to the Forum for the beginning of several orientation events. They  won't remember much until next week when it will all be repeated!

Deanne led some of the newly arrived students on their first-day walk of the Old City on Thursday (Jim was out of town and sorry to miss that!). It was her first solo adventure being in charge of directions and information. She did great. 

Overlooking Kidron Valley with the BYU Center in the distance

Atop Austrian Hospice

In front of Hidden Gate

Jim missed the walk since he was in Zikhron Ya’akov, which is about 60 miles north of Jerusalem and a little south of Haifa.  There is a luxury resort and arts complex there on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean.  See https://www.elma-hotel.com.  Jim was invited to play an organ recital as part of their high-end chamber music festival, and he was very pleased to be a part of it.  His visa doesn’t allow him to be paid for any work in Israel, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t give him a really nice room and passes to the buffet meals.  The Israelis really know how to put on a buffet spread! He shared a concert with a group performing Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” which Messiaen wrote in 1941 while he was in a prison camp during WW2.  Messiaen turned out to be a very prominent composer of organ music, so the recital included a piece by Messiaen (Le banquet céleste) and pieces by Vierne, Dupré, and Langlais, other organists with ties to Messiaen.  The splendid concert hall is state of the art.  The organ is a tracker organ by Klais of Germany.  The action is really heavy (grrr) and it’s very loud at the console (luckily Jim has learned to travel with earplugs).  Such is the life of the concert organist.  But it was a great honor to be a part of this music festival and another adventure in Israel.

View from the hotel room

Sunset after a wild storm

On his way back to Jerusalem, Jim stopped by Caesarea on the coast.  Loved the visit there, seeing aqueducts, hippodrome, theaters, Herod’s palace on the beach, Crusader fortress, etc.  

This new group of students are so nice. We took a large group of them plus the Rosens to the YMCA carillon tower. Again, another hit. Several of the students could play music by ear and did really well at the keyboard. We said goodbye to the Earnshaws before Jim's concert at the Center on Sunday. They have now arrived safely to their Maine home (and are loving being home!).

Deanne finally made it to the YMCA pose!

Mary Ellen Rosen

Jim played his all-Bach concert here on Sunday evening.  There was a big crowd, 300 or so.  Eran and Michal were very pleased.  The organ behaved, and it was a "glorious triumph." The earnings will be donated to music-related programs, musicians, or equipment.

The Earnshaws had told us about finally getting in to see the Tombs of the Kings, so Jim took a solo excursion to check it out.  It took some doing to find it, but it’s not far from the Garden Tomb, and is just around the corner from St. George’s Cathedral.  It’s a large funerary complex from the 1^st century AD.  It was thought that it was the burial place of the kings of Judah; then associated with Queen Helena of Adiabene; but now it is thought to have been designed for Herod Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod the Great.  Cut out of stone in the ground, there are large tombs, channels cut in the side walls to channel water into cisterns, and of course a graveyard of columns and capitals.  The property belongs to France and there is a French flag flying over the property. You have to stand in awe when you realize how much stone was cut and removed to create this quarry. 

With Yolaunda Keith and Jill Judd from the Branch