"Each rising sun tells of thy goodness"

The title of this entry is part of a song we sang in the Choir yesterday. The verse continues,

"Each rising sun tells of thy goodness. The rain

proclaims thee in the life it brings. All creation

bears thee sure and silent witness. And my

grateful spirit sings"

I thought these lyrics were perfect for our trip to the Garden of Gethsemane that yesterday afternoon. It was beautiful and the very trees testified of Christ through their beauty. It was a really cool experience. A huge group of us, about 35 out of the 79 people here, all treked up to the Orson Hyde Gardens which lead to the Garden of Gethsemane. Then we all had a chance to sit around (outside the gate of) the garden and read our scriptures/ write in our journals. The Garden was not exactly how I have always pictured it to be, but there is a great spirit that surrounds it. The Orson Hyde gardens were actually more like what I had in mind. It was interesting because though both gardens were beautiful, it is a different kind of beautiful. It is not so much green, more of random flowers next to trees. It is all pretty brown, but trust me, it is beautiful.

Today we had our first full free day!!! Woohoo! A really large group of us (things always seem to be in large groups, everyone is just to fun to leave behind) went to En Kerem. This is the birthplace of John the Baptist. We saw the well where Mary visited Elizabeth in the scriptures. One of my favorite things we did was to see the stained glass windows done by Mark Chagall. There were 12 windows, each one representing a different tribe of Israel. They were beautiful windows!! Then we took a few wrong turns up a few mountains until we finally found the actual town. It was the most adorable little town in the world! The view was beautiful as we hiked there and then once we were there, all the houses were cute stone houses with pretty little iron fences and flowers and greenry everywhere! We went to the St. John's Church there as well as the Visitation Church. Both were great!



I guess they have a siesta type thing in this town though because everything closes from noon to 2:30. We didn't know this until 11:30 so instead of walking all the way down a huge hill and back up the correct side to get to the Visitation Church, the monk inside the gate let us climb over it. It was an interesting experience, luckily (after a few close calls) no one riped their pants! After seeing the churches, we ended the day with one of my new favorite things... Gelato!!!! I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to ice cream, this is so much better! Anyway, needless to say the last two days have been jam packed with fun!!!!