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

Rome

Happy New Year! We were so fortunate to be able to take a side trip Rome, Italy, for six days this week. We had not been to Rome for .... many, many years. The adventure started early Monday morning getting to the Ben Gurion Tel Aviv airport by high speed train from Jerusalem. The train only takes 20 minutes but it took about 30 minutes just to be driven to the train station and to wind our way down, down, down the long escalators to the tracks deep underground. The airport wasn't much fun either as we had to take a 20-minute bus from the train to another terminal and go through five checkpoints to actually get to the departure gate. We did end up making it to the gate with time to spare, but not much. Luckily the flight to Rome was uneventful and we found the Fiumicino Rome airport to be modern and lovely. We grabbed a cab to the hotel which was located one block from Trevi Fountain. Location, location, location! We were not alone there. But we were in Italy and ready to have pasta and gelato! So we did. We had pasta, pizza, and gelato every day and never tired of it. Jim finally found his favorite (and best) pasta puttanesca at our "last supper." The people were delightful, the weather was cool but comfortable, and we ended up walking about 35 miles over the six days. We saw most of the traditional spots you have to see in Rome and uncovered a few not so famous places. Traveling with a church organist, we saw many, many churches, as you can well imagine. Sadly, Jim never got to play any organ in Rome. We were lucky to have our own Italian guide (an LDS friend) who drove us to the Rome Italy Temple one evening. Definitely a highlight.

In case you wondered what we did see and do, here are a few of our favorites:

Churches:

San Luici de Francesi, Church of San Eustachio, Church of St. Agnes in Agone, Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli, Church of St. Mary Maggiore (also known as Church of Bethlehem West with relic of the manger of Bethlehem), St. Peter's Basilica, Church of San Giovanni in Laterano with its monumental statues of the 12 apostles, Sanctuary of the Holy Stairs, Church of Santa Maria deli Angeli e dei Martiri, and several more

Church of St Louis of the French

St. Peter's Basilica

Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano

Sites:

Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona and the 4 Rivers statue, Campo de Fiori (fruit and vegetable market), Piazza Argentina, Piazza del Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill (designed by Michelangelo), Piazza Venezia, Altare della Patria (tribute to Vittorio Emanuele), Trajan’s column, the Forum, Vatican City, Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, body of Pope Benedict lying in state in St. Peter's, Colosseum, Piazza della Repubblica, LDS Rome Italy Temple, Piazza de Spagna and the Spanish steps, Villa Medici, Borghese gardens and art gallery, Piazza del Popolo, Via del Corso, Bocca della Verita (the Mouth of Truth), Tiber River, Ponte Fabricio, Teatro Marcello, sculpture of Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf

Trevi Fountain

Piazza Navona

The Colosseum

Rome Italy Temple

Food:

Linguine with clams, Puttanesca, Carbonara, Ragu Italiana, Amatriciana, Gnocchi Bolognese, Ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta in sage butter, Caprese salad, fried Zucca (zucchini flower, mozzarella, anchovies), bruschetta, Margherita pizza, tuna pizza, vegetarian/eggplant pizza

Bruschetta

Caprese Salad

Pasta Carbonara and Gnocchi in Bolognese sauce

Vegetarian Pizza

Gelato flavors: 

Vaniglia, chocolate with nuts, Kit Kat, pistachio, melon, passion fruit, raspberry, dark chocolate, mint chocolate

Pictures--we took 497 of them. We won't post them all here (we value your friendship too much!).  Here is a link so you can peruse at your leisure:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ox1ycserN65NwXuR6

And now the winter semester begins. We will meet 100 new students on Wednesday. We are looking forward to meeting them! 

December 27, Tuesday: Beautiful blue-sky day.  Deanne, Nicholas, and I walked to Augusta Victoria church where we played the organ (Nicholas pumped) and climbed the tower for the view.  Then to the Russian Church of the Ascension (according to tradition, John the Baptist’s head was brought here).  Deanne walked home, and Nicholas and I continued down the hill to the  Kidron Valley.  Up the steps, saw the south wall of the Old City; wandered through City of David excavations; up to Mt. Zion, Cenacle (traditional site of the Last Supper), Tomb of King David, and the Jewish Quarter. We took the bridge onto the Temple Mount, walked around and enjoyed that, out the Council Gate, then saw the Little Western Wall, Cotton Merchants, out Damascus Gate, where Deanne picked us up by the Rockefeller Museum.  We got our favorite Palestinian chicken dinner to go in Wadi Joz and headed home for a great dinner and visit.  Nicholas played beautiful piano music for us in the Auditorium. What a treat.

Replica of the Ark of the Covenant at Augusta Victoria

Nicholas pumping the organ

Russian Church of the Ascension

On the Temple Mount

Wednesday we woke up to learn that Nicholas’s flight on American Airlines had been cancelled.  A 90-minute call to a nice agent in Mexico City got him rebooked on El Al.  Whew. Before he left, we went to the British War Cemetery, one of our favorite places.  Such heart-rending epitaphs.  Then off to the YMCA carillon and enjoyed playing there (although with his perfect pitch, the transposing feature drove Nicholas crazy).  

Two WW1 soldiers from the same regiment, killed the same day, 

and buried in the same grave.

Linda Margetts (organist at Temple Square), her husband Bert, their 6 kids, and all their grandkids, a total of 42 people, came for a tour on Thursday.  Linda and I were organ students at the same time in 1969 at BYU, so it was a fun reunion.  I gave them a super demo of the organ, and then Linda played a couple of pieces (“Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring” and the finale of Bach's St. Matthew Passion). 

We went on a favorite 3-mile loop walk around Hebrew University. On the way back, we passed the "competing" Christmas tree by City View Restaurant. Their tree may be taller than the Center's, but our tree is much more beautiful! The sun was out which made for a lovely walk.

There were 200+ visitors for Sabbath services that we weren’t counting on.  It's always a surprise for us to see how many guests show up and how many of them we know! There are always a couple of friends and acquaintances at church. Jim accompanied Emily Judd on the cello playing "Abide With Me." Sagit Zilbermann, a very musically talented woman in the Branch, played her handpan (classified as a subset of the steelpan) and accompanied herself singing “Nearer, My God, To Thee.” Here is one of her YouTube links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHkmDJsrk-c&ab_channel=Allegra%26SagitMusic

Jim taught the 5^th Sunday lesson on Becoming Exemplary Latter-day Saints, talking about our experience as service volunteers here. 

We had a New Year's Eve Branch potluck lunch after the meeting.  Later in the evening, we joined the faculty and service couples here in the Center for a fun New Year’s Eve party of treats and games. 

Earnshaws, Judds, Properzis

Nicholas made it safely home and was welcomed by piles of snow! Jameson and Erika have been in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, with her family for the new year which also had a ton of snow. Everyone will be back in Provo on January 1. Jameson and Erika only have one more semester at BYU. Can it be? Big news for Jameson: he accepted a position with the Casper Wyoming Police Department starting May 1. Nicholas is awaiting more acceptances to law schools before he makes that final decision.  It will be a year of transitions for us all!