Day 31-33

Well it's just about over! Here is what we have done the last 3 days . . .

Monday . . . last day of digging! We finished up the work in our squares and got them ready to shut down for the season. Any exposed pottery had to be quickly excavated. Anything left exposed will disappear before next dig season. Treasure hunters and looters come and take anything they think they can sell. I uncovered an entire storage vessel with less than an hour to go. We had to quickly expose it, excavate it and pull it out of the ground. It was pretty cool looking. It was shattered into very large pieces, but still quite cool looking. It had mudbrick and a large rock on top of it from when the walls fell during the destruction 2700 years ago. The square next to us uncovered a VERY cool, bulbous looking storage vessel. It was filled with dirt and thus the shape was preserved in situ (in place). It, too, was broken, but since it was full of dirt, it looked way cooler than mine! They found a lot more stuff in the last 2 days. I am confident that whoever digs our square next year will find some pretty neat stuff. So, we finished digging and leveled out our squares and got ready for our last day Tuesday.

Tuesday . . . This was basically clean and sweep day. We brushed and swept our floors of our squares, making sure to remove loose dirt and rocks, and brush away ANY and ALL footprints. We also had to brush our balks (sweep any loose dirt off and trim any roots growing in the walls). We polished any large rocks or mudbrick surfaces (use a brush to sweep ANY dirt off and make sure they will POP on the aerial photos). I polished our stone pillar in our square. We had to sweep back 1 meter on all sides of our square. And then the ENTIRE dig site had to be brushed to remove any footprints. Of course, we removed the shade cloths and equipment first. After all equipment was brought back down the hill, we emptied the storage container (one of those storage containers you see on trains) and inventoried all equipment and then repacked it. We took down the base camp shade cloth and stored it with all the other equipment. That concluded our work at the dig site!

Wednesday . . . only about 8 of the smallest/shortest people were taken back to the site for photos. A dirigible balloon that is equipped with a camera and controlled by a remote control on the ground was rented and used to take aerial photos of the entire dig site. The people that went were used to scale the photos. The rest of us slept in until 6:30 am and then did some work around the dig house, tearing down equipment and doing the last of the pottery washing. I played lots and lots of chess. I lost once more today, but I'm 30-5 (or something like that).

Wednesday night we had a going away party. The Neve Shalom folks put on a big feast for us with lots of . . . PIZZA! They have some very unique ideas about what topping combos go together . . . my personal favorite . . . green olive with red bell pepper and corn (sounds weird, but pretty good!). Then we had a talent show put on by the staff and volunteers. I won't try and recount what occurred b/c it won't be funny to you . . . but I assure you . . . it was funny! It was a good way to wrap everything up.

Tomorrow (Thursday) . . . we will sleep in until 7:00 am and then just hang out all day. Our flight leaves Tel Aviv around 12:30 am, so we won't leave Neve Shalom until 6:00 or 7:00 pm. I may try and blog one last time tomorrow. I will get back home around 6:23 pm on Friday after a connecting flight on Continental Airlines out of New York's JFK. (Thanks, Dave for picking me up!)

I failed to mention something from Sunday that was probably one of the best experiences of my trip . . . we had met an Arabic shop keeper on Saturday (our last shopping stop for the day) and discovered that he is a believer and attends an Arabic, evangelical, believer's church. We asked if we could attend Sunday's service. So, Sunday, we headed back to Jerusalem for one final day of (on our own) site seeing and shopping, and about 10 of us went to the church service at 10:00 am. The church was located in a small little building down a back alley. The service was held in an upper room (no, I'm not kidding). They had a section for people who needed translating (headsets were made available), and a little old Arabic lady sat in front of us and translated into a cheap Radio Shack microphone! It was great! The service was amazing . . . I felt like I was living Acts 2 . . . when the Holy Spirit descended on the believers in the upper room! The disciples were able to speak in the languages of other nations and the sound of many languages praising God and proclaiming the Gospel filled the air! That's what it sounded like when he asked everyone to pray in little groups . . . I heard Arabic, Hebrew, English, Korean, German . . . it was amazing. Most people couldn't understand anybody other than their own language, but all were united in and by the spirit of Christ . . . the great reconciler . . . the great unifier . . . as Paul said, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, but you (we) are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3.28). I cannot describe to you the feeling, the experience of praising God with brothers and sisters from a different country, a different race, a different culture, a different language, a different denomination . . . yet ONE IN CHRIST! It was the most intense worship experience that I have had for a long time. This is what had been missing in my trip. This is what I was longing for. In God's providence we ran into this Arabic shop keeper and were able to experience the blessing of worshiping in a very unique way in this land of Israel, the home of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!

It has been a long, long trip. It has been far more arduous than I had planned! But, I have learned much, including the immortal lesson learned by our very own Kansas native Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz . . . "there's no place like home!" I can't wait to be home!

Tomorrow, I will post some of my best, worst moments . . . some lists of too much of/not enough of . . . what I will miss the most/won't miss at all . . . what I'm looking forward to when I get home!

So stay tuned for tomorrow's final broadcast from the Holy Land!

It's 10:05 pm and time for bed!

Shalom!

Trey