Alive, Well and Sunburned

I just realized that it's been a long time since I wrote anything. I promise that I'm alive and well, even if I have dropped off the face of the earth.

Saturday, our branch went to the Cave of Christ, a cave in northwest Jordan, right on the border with Israel, on the hills above the Sea of Galilee, where Jordanian tradition holds that the Savior would retreat to teach his disciples away from the multitudes.

We went to clean the cave up. The Middle East doesn't generally share the same aversion to litter that we hold dear in America. Sometimes when I get up to walk to a garbage can to throw my garbage away, my friends will look at me strangely, take my garbage from me offering to take care of it for me, and then throw it over their shoulder. So you can imagine that a tourist site, even a slightly out-of-the-way one, would have a good build-up of garbage over a period of a few months. We spent time cleaning up garbage from in and around the cave, then ate lunch in front of the cave, overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

It's a beautiful area, and it was beautiful to imagine what might have happened there. It was less beautiful to think about the reality--the contention that continues over who's going to end up with these lands--but sitting there in the bright sun, with a gentle breeze, looking out over a beautiful lake in a lush valley, it was hard to remember that we were looking at some of the most violently contested land in the world.

And I got a sunburn.