Day 83

We had our New Testament midterm this morning, so me and Jessie woke up absurdly early to get in a little bit more studying. Right after the test we had class again, and then 2 hours of ANE. By lunch we were all a little wiped out, but we went out into the Old City anyway and it ended up being a really fun afternoon.

I went out with some people who I don't really hang out with that often, and it was really fun to get to know all of them a little bit better. We went to Dormition Abbey first, which is a supposed resting place of Mary. Under the church there is a crypt with a tomb that has a likeness of Mary over it. There were the most beautiful mosaics all over the two levels of the church, but there was also an angry man who walked around and wouldn't let us take pictures of certain things. We love these people.

After Dormition Abbey we went to the Upper Room, which is where the Last Supper took place. It wasn't a very big place, but we sang some hymns there and it was really cool the way it reverberated in the stone room. The next place we went, King David's Tomb, a lady came up to us and asked if we were the ones who had been singing at the Upper Room. We said yes, and she thanked us and said that it really helped her to feel something there, which can be hard when places are flocked with tourists. It was really neat to talk to her, we felt like we were able to do a little bit of missionary work. Even if we couldn't tell her about the Church, at least we could share the Spirit with her.

Next we went to a small Holocaust memorial museum that was next door, and then we tried to go to Schindler's grave but it was locked. Apparently there are some weird hours that we didn't know about. So instead we headed back to the Center. On the way we saw a big commotion at the Western Wall, so we stopped there to check it out and discovered that it was Tisha B'av, a day set apart to mourn the destruction of the temple. The Jews can't shave for 3 weeks before, they can't sit on an upright chair that day and they all go to the Western Wall and fast on the day of. I put a prayer in the Wall while we were there, it was cool to be there during the day with all of the people.

Last night was dinner, reading, and a cool Book of Mormon movie. I was still tired from waking up so early so I went to bed early, and it felt so nice :)