It’s been a month and ten days since we have gotten here and time just seems to be getting faster and faster. I know everyone’s name and have had a conversation with every single person and a lot of heart to hearts. I am coming to truly love the people that I am with. Although I will admit, at times I am learning how to love and be patient and see the good in everyone, at all the times. But I can cot complain about my experience here. Not in the least bit. It is as even more grand and amazing than I thought it would be. I am already getting sad thinking about the day that I will leave this center and this beautiful city. It is amazing how every week we pack up in a bus, which might I just add that I hate buses! But we pack up and drive, sometimes to what seems like the middle of nowhere and we get there, pile off the bus with our headsets, scriptures and cameras and follow the herd, passing a sign that say “Beth-shemesh”. We stop at what looks like a pile of rocks and our teacher says lets open up to 1 Samuel 5 and 6 and read such and such verses. And it is at that moment when I hear the story of the Philistines carrying the Ark of the Covenant up to a place called Beth-shemesh that I realize that I am standing on the exact location that this story took place. I take a moment to breathe and imagine what it would have been like in that time when the pile of rocks I was looking at was a city wall or a house of someone. And it dawns on me that this really happened. These stories are about real people in real places. And here I am, thousands of years later at the same location. Who gets to do that with Biblical stories? As I walk around, take a few jumping pictures and pick a wild flower my mind takes a mental picture of what I am looking at. I put the flower in my Bible to always remind me of the significant place I was just at. I get back on the bus and head to the next important site. And again on another day I find myself walking through a narrow cave with water up to my thighs and imagine how the people of the City of David had to carve out this water passage from the inside of the city to the outside of the walls, hoping that they would somehow meet in the middle. Crazy! Everyday I wake up and remind myself that today is one more and one less day in the city of Jerusalem and I wonder what I am going to do today to make it a wonderful day. (Most of the time it includes going to class in the morning and learning about the Bible, Judaism, which I am learning is more of a way of life and a people than a religion…fancy that. And Islam class with a tiny bit of Arabic sprinkled in there.) But the rest of the day consists of wandering through the streets of Jerusalem sometimes just walking down one street and finding another one that looks cool and ending up in another part of the city that I can recognize. Or like yesterday walking around on the roofs of some homes in the city or playing the bells at the YMCA where the whole city of Jerusalem heard my rendition of “High on a Mountain Top”. It’s amazing the things I am experiencing here. But best of all, with all the wonders and struggles that I am dealing with here, I am learning and drawing closer to my Savior and understanding that it doesn’t take being in the Holy Land to feel his presence in my life, that the warmth and feelings I feel while at the Garden Tomb are the same feeling that I have felt while in my room back in California or Provo while on my knees in humble prayer. As my mother told me before I left and President Monson said, “We need not visit the Holy Land to feel him close to us. We need not walk by the shores of Galilee or among the Judean hills to walk where Jesus walked. In a very real sense, all can walk where Jesus walked when, with his words on our lips, his spirit in our heart, and his teachings in our lives, we journey through mortality." It’s true. I am just one of the lucky few who gets to have this experience and literally walk where He did. After this trip it will be hard for me to forget the moments that I have had here and the lessons I am learning about life and myself. I can’t describe my gratitude for my Savior and the life He led. And that He can come and comfort a poor soul like me in my hardest moments of life. May we never forget the significance of His life and the wondrous things He did, here in Jerusalem and here in our own lives.

-N