The following day, Tracy and Zachary took us on the Metro to downtown Kyiv and tours of interesting sites. We saw the Golden Gate (gate in the city walls dating back to the Middle Ages), St. Sophia’s Cathedral & Museum, St. Michael’s Cathedral and Museum, plus Independence Square. It was a delightful day, far less “heavy” than Jon’s “Dark Day” tour. St. Sophia’s was probably the highlight as we’ve seen St. Sophia’s in what seems like a dozen other European cities. I found the Kyiv Metro to be quite a contrast from other Metro’s we’ve experienced. First, there’s virtually no graffiti. [View Full Entry]

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We started the day by sleeping until 8:30! I guess it was the 1 AM wakeup call in Jerusalem the day before that made us such lazy bones. The girls leave for school at 8, so we missed them entirely this morning. We did, however, have time for some breakfast before Jon loaded us up in his car and took us touring. First visit was the cemetery. It’s huge! I’d say it’s about 1.5 to 2 miles square and is just row after row of burial plots. The plots are all fenced into square little corrals where there is normally just [View Full Entry]

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We started on the next leg of our adventure with a 2 AM taxi ride from our Jerusalem hotel to the Tel Aviv airport and our flight to Kyiv, Ukraine via Prague, Czech Republic. Our one-hour drive brought us to what should have been a sleepy deserted ghost town of an airport. Instead, it was bustling with activity. People were coming and going even at 3 AM. Don’t they know it’s time to be home sleeping? Our Czech Airlines flights on Airbus 320’s were uneventful but pleasant. The crew was pleasant, efficient and even attractive. The food was some of the [View Full Entry]

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The next four days we spent touring Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a holy city for three religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Bible only about a bazillion times and in Old Testament times was the only place where offerings to God could be offered. All Jewish festivals took place in Jerusalem and all Jews were commanded to celebrate the festivals there. The Temple, originally built by King Solomon, was situated on the Temple Mount. This is the place, Mount Mariah, where Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22). The Temple was destroyed when the Babylonians carried the [View Full Entry]

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First thing in the morning, we visited Mt. Nebo where Moses was allowed to view the Promised Land, but not to enter. The rest of the rest of the Israelites were allowed to enter, but Moses died there and God buried him. No one knows where. We left Jordan and crossed the Jordan River into Israel. The Jordanian tour bus was able to take us to the Customs & Immigration station just across the border, but no farther. At that point, Israeli Border Police took us into their control. I just counted the previous entries in my passport and came up [View Full Entry]

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Next we drove to the Red Sea and bid adieu to our Egyptian tour host, Tommy, and Egyptian guide, Yassir, who were afraid they would drown when we walked across the sea on dry ground. As it turned out, we had to use a boat, so they could have made it, but we had another guide waiting for us on the Jordanian shore. Moses and the Israelites walked across the Red Sea and when Pharaoh’s army tried to follow, they did drown. It’s not known exactly where the children of Israel crossed the sea, but it was definitely not on a [View Full Entry]

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The next day we started our Exodus tour with Ancient Egypt. Of course we had to “do” the pyramids, the sphinx and just desert in general. We also got to spend a couple of hours at the Cairo Museum. It includes artifacts going back as much as 5,000 years and many mummified remains of pharos, pharos’ wives and some other important people from thousands of years ago. From there we crossed under (yes, under) the Suez Canal and onto the Sinai Peninsula following the route that Moses and the Israelites took across the desert. We stayed the next night at the [View Full Entry]

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After our day of orphans and meat eating, we hopped our Kenya Airlines flight to Cairo and arrived at our hotel about midnight. There we met up with our tour group, mostly from our summer church. Before they arrived about dinner time, we spent a most enjoyable day with the Fares family in Cairo. Many of my readers know Mark & Veronica Shultz, missionaries in Porvenir, Mexico. Their daughter, Kim, and her husband of 10 years, Shady, along with their two young children, Karina and Mark live in Cairo. Kim runs a graphics design company and Shady is a project manager [View Full Entry]

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The Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage is located on the edge of Nairobi. For several decades the handlers here have been rescuing baby elephants that have been orphaned. They pick up young elephants as young as 2 days old and try to find a lactating female nearby to nurse the baby. If none can be found or none will accept the baby they bring the little elephant back to their shelter and feed, protect and care for it until it is about three years of age. At that time the young elephant is reintroduced to a wild herd. Baby elephants must nurse until [View Full Entry]

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I have just spent the last two weeks plus in Kenya. I have just spent the last six days of that time riding in the back of a Toyota Land Cruiser (aka ambulance) with a black man with whom I have laughed, cried, told jokes, prayed, and discussed politics. He is a camel herder who lives 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) from an 800-person Samburu village which is in turn a three hour drive from the nearest town of 10,000 people -- and has no paved streets. Matthew lives in a hut built of sticks although he could afford to live in [View Full Entry]

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