Day Three- The Sabbath

For Jews, the Sabbath actually starts at sundown on Friday and goes to sundown on Saturday.  The hotel we stayed at actually had a synagogue on floor "99" which was between the first and second floor.  There were many people in the hotel for that weekend and to attend their meetings there. So even on our first evening in Jerusalem we were introduced to some of the rules and customs of the Jewish faithful.

While there were four elevators for guests, on the Sabbath day, three of them became "sabbath" elevators which meant that they stopped on every floor.  Practicing Jews can not start a fire on the Sabbath which has been extended to mean that they can not turn on or off electricity.  That means they can't call the elevator or direct it to a certain floor which is why there are certain elevators stopping on every floor....did you follow that?

When you needed an elevator typically, you typed in the floor you wanted to go to on this device outside of the elevator.  It would then show you what elevator to take-- A, B, C or D...and then when it came you would get in and it would take you to the correct floor.  Simple, except when there is only one elevator available to be called......long waits on the Sabbath for a called elevator and stories of long trips in the elevator when you tried to take one that "opened on every floor" because in my experience, it didn't stop at our floor!  Perhaps we were on the "foreigner floor."

Saturday after breakfast, we headed out to the bus to be taken to the Jerusalem Center to visit the beautiful grounds and attend Church there.

On the grounds they have displays of 
wine press and olive trees and other
common references items in the Old and New Testaments

The view towards Old Jerusalem

We are really here (there)!

Sister Jones and Sister Winn

Front gates into the Jerusalem Center

An view from a hallway

The view during Sacrament Meeting--unforgettable!

And to share it with my family--priceless!

The organ was amazing.
I have never seen pipes coming out of the organ
like this one.

So fun that we met up with Paul and Patty Barker who had served in the Collections Zone with us before leaving for their full time mission here at the Jerusalem Center.  They will be here a year.

Afterwards, we headed to Old Jerusalem to walk around and also have some lunch.

We went by the Church of the Holy Sephulchre where several different Churches believe that Christ was buried.

 

I love watching people worship--even in ways that are different than my own.  Even in the mix and noise, it makes it a holy place.

I loved the colors in the market especially after the tans of all of the buildings themselves.

Narrow street markets found the world over except maybe in the US, Canada, and Australia because they are "younger"?

We would definitely suggest people come with Israel currency.  It was said to us that everywhere takes dollars--that is true but they set their own exchange rate and it is always in their favor--significantly so. We had a few negative experiences with this on the first day which made us super cautious the rest of the trip about buying things.  Lesson learned.