Day 9 -- Four Wheeling in the Golan Heights and shoe shopping?

Our morning begins on a Kibbutz located at the base of the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights is a strategic piece of land that Israel maintains control over. The Heights overlook the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and abuts the southwestern border of Syria and is near the souththeastern border of Lebanon.

There is a lot of recent history and current contention regarding this piece of important real-estate. For us, we were going to learn a lot today, and have fun doing it.

We piled into 7 jeeps -- some were old and some were older, and then proceeded to work our way through an informative tour of the high tech agriculture phenom that is the Kibbutz. We were introduced to the way of life on the Kibbutz (community) and sampled some of the crops such as plums, sweet peas and cotton. Leaving the fertile fields, we crossed over the Jordan river and began a bouncy and steep climb up the Golan.

At the top of the Golan Heights we were given a history lesson by Gideon, one of the jeep drivers who has fought in 6 of Israel's wars. This grandfatherly character was an exceptional communicator as he stood on a decrepit bunker built by the Syrian Army and told the story of the Six Day War. You can read about it here at
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/67_War.html


After saying good-bye to our jeep drivers, we stopped at an outpost on the Syrian Border and looked at the U.N. base that sits right on the road to Damascus. You might remember this road from the book of Acts...it is on this road that Saul of Tarsus runs into the risen Christ and later becomes the Apostle Paul.

Here, an Israeli reservist tells us about his life and duties in the Army. Every Israeli serves a three year stint in the military upon graduation from High School and serves in the reserves for many years after. Please pray for our new friend Mordecai, he has lots of questions about the bible and was very interested in talking about matters of faith and even bible prophecy, which he asked us questions about.

Lunch included Falafel's and Schnitzel and then we continued to roam around the northern part of the country. Matthew 16 records the account of Jesus talking to His disciples in an area called Caesarea Philippi.

It was in Caesarea Philippi that the Romans built a temple to a god called 'Pan' (the dancing goat) next to a cave. There is an underground spring in this cave which becomes one of the three main headwaters of the Jordan River. The local pagans called this cave 'the gates of hell' because it purportedly was the access point to the river Styx in hell. "The Gates of Hell will not prevail against my Church" Jesus told Peter near this place. Here I am, holding back the gates of hell!

Genesis 14 records the story of Abraham coming to the city of Dan. The ancient city of Dan is a located today in a nature reserve that also includes a headwater of the Jordan -- the spring of Dan is the biggest spring in the middle east (1 billion gallons of water a year).

We stopped to hike the nature trails and enjoyed a part of the river where David might have penned the words of Psalm 42. In this picture, our guide Gilla is pointing out interesting geographical information, or maybe she is doing her best Sacajawea pose. Guides like to imitate other famous guides you know.

After passing by the remains of the altar that Jereboam built, as recorded in 1 Kings 12:32ff, the B-4 team came to an important archaelogical discovery. Here, Kim and Frank Ponds are standing in front of an ancient city gate made of mud bricks in what was once part of the city of Dan. This gate has been dubbed 'Abraham's Gate' due to the fact that Abraham, more than likely, saw this gate as he came to this city many years ago.

As the sun set beautifully in the cloudless middle eastern sky...as our minds hurt from learning so much that we sat quietly in our bus seats...as our bodies anticipated showers and a good meal at the hotel ahead...we heard the news that made the ladies roar "we are going shoe shopping." What???

It seems that a popular, and expensive, brand of shoes (Naot) are made right here in northern Israel and there is a store on the factory grounds that sells the shoes at a great savings. Discount shopping for these shoes while in Israel was on the wish list for several of the ladies on the team.

8 year old, Alex Soo, the youngest member of our team looked up at me with a pained expression and said "why are we here?" I simply put my hand on his shoulders and said "son, as a man, there are some things that you cannot understand, you just have to accept." We then walked out of the store and joined 149 other men, all standing around kicking at the dirt and fidgeting with their watches. Somewhere off in the distance, a coyote howled.