Palm Sunday

It's Holy Week and it all started with Palm Sunday (this past Sunday)!!! Sunday morning is our free day and at breakfast I sat with President and Sister Brown and found out that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the hot spot for Palm Sunday, so I tagged along with them to the church. It was PACKED! The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the traditional sight for crucifixion and burial place of Christ and there are five different church denominations housed inside the church with two others next to the church competing for attention. The Greek Orthodox Church is the head honchos at the church and they have the main gathering hall in the church so on Sunday that's where I headed. I stood squeezed inside the hall for what felt like an eternity, the worship service is in Latin so I didn't understand a single bit of it and all the people were pushing and shoving to get a glimpse of the patriarch and to be involved in Palm Sunday. Eventually the moment I was wanting for came! The procession began! The banner boys and deacons led the way outside the hall into the center area of the church. At the center of the church is a monstrosity of a structure over Christ's tomb. The procession is suppose to walk around the structure 7 times (they only did it 3 times though). Anyways it was such a cool experience, as soon as the procession began the old nuns became extremely aggressive! Don't mess with nuns, that's for sure! They wanted to be right behind the patriarch just like I did so I fell right in line and pushed my way throughout the procession, it was lots of fun to be so involved in the celebration! The church was backed and as I walked in step with the procession it was so fun to be able to look around the church and see all my JC friends scattered throughout the church! As the procession was ending and the patriarch was headed to their worship hall, I followed our New Testament teacher Brother Manscill to the back entrance to the where the sacraments are prepared, basically their most sacred area, well we snuck in there. I didn't last too long though, the shouts "No Woman, No Woman" was good enough for me to clear out. But nonetheless it was pretty cool! After the Greek Orthodox procession ended the Armenians and Coptic's (Egyptian Christians) took their turns in doing their own processions. It was so cool to see all the different traditions and ways to celebrate.
Later on Sunday as a program we walked to the top of the Mount of Olives and did the traditional Palm Sunday walk all the way down through Lion's Gate into St. Anne's Church with the Roman Catholics. I thought the masses at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was big but this was even bigger! Everyone had their palm leaves and were singing hymns of worship.
Palm Sunday was so much fun, maybe one of my most favorite days here! It only gets better!!! :)
-Brooke