Day 2;
Good news, jetlag is conquered! After a full nights sleep with a quick wake up to chat with my family who were enjoyjng the afternoon I woke up fully rested! I had a wonderful breakfast that included fresh olives again! Seriously, the world is a great place because of olives.
After that, we boarded the bus to head to the Heroidan fortress outside Jersualem. This is the same guy who tried to kill the infant Jesus, rebuilt the temple, the paranoid but powerful ruler, that guy. To build his fortress he literally moved half a mountain to this one to build it. And all you need is a mustard seed, right (it's a religious joke, one Jesus was serious in making). Here you can see it from far away. The hump in the middle is it.
Well we get there and it's steep. This is a steep country people! 2000 years old too. Obviously I'm stoked and we climb to the top. I'm excited!
This is also the place where the Jews fought the Romans in the uprising of 66 AD (or CE), where they fight hard but lose and the Romans destroy the temple as punishment. 
So within this fortress are tunnels, lots of tunnels. The 1st were made for the aqueducts, the later ones were made by Jewish rebels who would sneak around to attack Romans and sneak away. Here we are checking it out. It's all made of soft limestone like chalk, so digging was easy.
We then left to go to the Town of the Nightwatch (in other words, shepherds). Here is one we spotted traveling today (the shepherd is dead center wearing green):
This Nightwatch place is where shepherds were told of the coming of the Nativity, according to tradition. Well, this site has been honored since the 4th century, so there is that to consider. Interesting to note, shepherds who were nomadic (like Abraham) used caves a lot to shelter their sheep for the nightwatch and storms. So guess where the worship space is?...in a cave dating back to that time! This church is run by the Franciscans. We spent time there for prayer and meditation:
After a lunch break we went to the Church of the Navitity in Bethlehem, the traditional site where Christ was born. It was originally built in the 4th century but was destroyed, and was rebuilt in the 6th. Oldest church I've ever been in for sure! The church is "shared" by the Armenian, Greek Orthodox, and Catholic Church.
I say that in quotes because it is an uneasy sharing, but I admire that they are doing it. Ask me in person for details. Inside the church is a tiny cave which would be the ideal place to keep animals, perfect for THE manger. We happened to get there when the Armenian priest blessed this holy cave with the chanting of prayers and the burning of rich, pungent incenses. I took video of the blessing which I may share later, but here we are with our tour guide Deeb with the mic;
Next door to the church is the church dedicated to St Catherine. The Catholics just sort of added it on... Underneath it are the caves where St Jerome lived; the guy to translated the Bible from Greek to Latin, the most used translation for over 1000 years! Dude, amazing. He is worth googling; 
After this stop we went to the Bethlehem Bible College, a school in Palestine dedicated to equipping and supporting pastors of this land. An interesting footnote; Christians who live in the Holy Land (who aren't tourists or missionaries) are Palestinian. Palestinian is both Arab and Christian, and while the population of native Christians is declining fast as most are leaving due to the political, economic, and military strife, they are the Christians who can trace back their ancestry to the 1st century converts. Wow! These guys are fighting this trend, and I wish them luck. Here is an amazing mosaic inside the college (it's 3 dimensional, and is made of local clay).
This day we got a real taste of what the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is about. It's about neighbors who have a hard time trusting one another and have a great deal to fear of one other (and that's on both sides, and the fear is well realized). That brought me to another question, is security a Christian doctrine? We long for safety and security, but really, isn't love being in a state of complete vulnerability but you do it anyway because you trust the other? Jesus abandoned safety for the Gospel...where does that leave us? I think we have much to learn from what Israelis and Palestinians can teach us, and I hope to encourage these conversations when I get home.
Well, till then, enjoy the photos and stories, and the pilgrimage continues tomorrow! Peace;
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