Day 13 - Masada & En Gedi

In preparation for our morning hike this morning, I packed my handy dandy alarm clock, which operates on only 1 AA battery that I found at the Forge in the grass last year after check out for the summer. I decided to set it for 3:45 AM, because we were scheduled to leave at 4:15 AM for a sunrise hike up the mountain. We also were supposed to have a wake up call from the leadership of the team. Neither of these measures happened this morning, however, and we (Rufus and I) were awoken to Ben and Shamir pounding on our door asking if we were ready. As I reached a hand out of bed to open the door, and they stood there proudly, I gazed over to my alarm clock, which read 4:15 AM. Thank you technology.

Rufus and I hurriedly got dressed and hiked it up the stairs, dreading we'd be the last ones and be left behind. As we reached the meeting place, we, to our horror, found ourselves in an empty room. But there was breakfast with good cake. To squelch our disappointment, we started to eat. Soon after, the rest of the group showed up, one by one, with one exception: our leader. Surprisingly, no one had received a wake up call from him. A messenger was sent to his door, to which a groggy Michael Onifer came out. We left around 4:45.

Billy, Eric, and I took the lead on hiking up this mountain to the city of Masada (2 km hike, 300 m high). This path basically consists of a bunch of zig zagging steep stairs up the mountain. We started out at a jog, but that got old (and tiring) very quickly. It was hot (as we're climbing a mountain in the desert) but we 3 made it up the mountain under 25 minutes. That was pretty impressive. We had the mountain to ourselves for about 10 minutes before the rest of them showed up. I felt kind of sick after all that exercise after a period in my life where I haven't been "exactly physically active." I got over it, though, and as the last of the group made it up the mountain, we were able to watch the sunrise. It was beautiful.

Now some history about Masada. Masada is a fortress built by King Herod to be almost a "winter vacation house". From here he could watch his southern enemy countries. After Jerusalem fell in 70 AD, the Jews and Maccabees fled to this fortress on top of this mountain, the last Jewish community of the time. The Romans chased them there, but the Jews held their own and threw stones down at them and the Romans couldn't take the mountain. The laid seige to the city and cut off their water supply. However, due to the huge amount of storage of water, the Jewish people actually held out for TWO YEARS. After this period of time, the Romans got fed up and decided to end this once and for all. Using Jewish slaves, they built a path to the Eastern Gate (The Jews didn't attack their own). When they got close, the Jewish elders in the community thought that although suicide is a horrible sin, it would be even worse to be captured and see their wives raped and their children enslaved (the Romans were pretty ticked - not being able to capture the city for 2 years and having to camp at the base of the mountain in the desert sun). So each head of house killed his family, and then they all came and drew lots to see who among them would kill the others and himself. When the Romans finally entered the city, they found no one living. In later years, however, a manuscript was discovered, with the chapter of Ezekiel 37 (Ezekiel seeing the dry bones). It was really cool to see how God is resurrecting his people and breathing life into them in the last days (and yes - this prophesy is talking about the JEWS and not the CHURCH) - and even more interesting to see how it was found where these dry bones are still at, buried under the earth of these Jews. The oldest Jewish synagogue in the world is still found on these ruins today.

Kevin, Shamir, and I walked back down the mountain while the majority of the group took the cable car. It somehow worked out that we still got to the bottom at the same time. Kevin has taken a rock about as big as my head as a souvenir of the mountain. We all have given him significant "input" on the notion, but he seems pretty committed to the idea. He carried it the entire time down the mountain. After we returned to the hostel, we had breakfast, and then slept til noon for lunch.

After lunch, we headed to En Gedi, which is where David fled from King Saul and hid in the caves. We walked a little bit down a path (in the scorching heat - and since Michael made the first hike seem like a walk in the park, when really, it was a lot more than that) we were worried that this walk would have been long and drawn out. But soon enough we came to a waterfall and a pool, where we got to swim for about an hour. It was such a nice relief from the scorching heat of the desert. I then journeyed up to a few more pools and a very large waterfall, called King David's waterfall. After visiting, I came back to a deep pool where people were jumping off rocks into the water. This called to the very depths of my soul, as I have this history of doing stupid things such as this: jumping out of 2nd story windows, monkey swings, trapezes, and the like. But after I convinced Lydia to get up and do it with us, and Billy, Shamir, Lydia and I were on the edge of this rock, this guy yelled at us and told us to get down. Shamir jumped anyway and got an earful. So we had to get down. :-( Hopefully we get to do something else crazy soon instead. We had to leave soon after this incident, and saw a couple of goat-things. There is a better name for them, but I forget what it is.

Outside the grounds, we had a time of praise and worship outside, as this was where David wrote a lot of the psalms. After a while, we had a time of prayer for those called to music ministry. There were about 10 of us, which was surprising. It was a good, powerful time of worship and prayer. A white chocolate ice cream bar sealed off the afternoon with a smile.

Dinner was good tonight - and in honor of Shawna's birthday, we had cake, and I got to lead the singing, woohoo! After that, we had a meeting about our service projects when we get back. I have a really good idea I think to do at the forge, but I need to pray for more guidance. I want to do something big and something that is going to make a difference.

After this, we had a basketball tournament where Rafael took on Esohe. He did eventually beat her, but not by much. I took my laptop and wrote this entire journal entry. However, after this whole basketball event, I lost this entire entry…so this is round 2. Hopefully I covered everything.

Shabat Shalom. From Masada.