Shephelah Field Trip

Great day. What is the Shephelah?  Well, it is basically they way the land is set up.  Next to the Mediteranean you have the beach and the towns out there.  Further inland you have small mountains with valley's between them (these mountains were where our field trip was).  The cities that were on these mountains would have been a line of defense for the big cities on the bigger mountains.  I am not sure that makes sense without being there but it is worth a shot. We started out at Beth Shemesh which protects Jerusalem.  It was a nice little tell where we could see where Samson lived.  We read about Samson and I realized something.  He is an idiot.  He lies and tells a woman three different things that would get rid of his strength and after he tells her each of those happen.  And then he goes and tells her the real thing to get rid of his strength.  Wow!  He breaks covenants left and right and I don't even feel bad for the guy.  Perhaps thinking would really have helped him out. Next we headed to Azekah which overlooks the valley of Elah.  Azekah protects Bethlehem. This is where David slew Goliath.  This outlook was beautiful.

Devon, Taylor, Lindsay and I.

The benches had the story of David written on them in Hebrew.

Then we went to Lachish. There were battles that took place here and it talks about them in the bible. You should look them up because they are pretty great stories. I will summarize it a bit here though. Lachish was one of the greatest cities for protection because as it was closest to Egypt it had to be very strong. At one point everything had been taken but Lachish and Jerusalem. People came to Lachish and slaughtered them. In Jerusalem the people were worried and prayed hard. God said that he would fight their battle for them. He killed those who were coming while they were still at Lachish. Pretty amazing huh? (I hope I got this story right but I don't remember who the bad guys were).

Awkward photo!

With Lindsay, my bus buddy of the day!

With Brielle and Lindsay.

Up next was Mareshah which was underground awesomeness.

Isn't this place beautiful?

Landing a jumping picture.

Much better!  (With Kaitlyn and Katie.)

Olive Press.

Next, bell caves.

Ala Lion King.

Then we were supposed to head to Elah Valley to throw stones at the pretend Goliath. However, after we got back on the bus after the bell caves the bus wouldn't get into gear. We tried for a while and then they decided to put us on the other groups bus who had just gotten to the bell caves and take our group to Elah and come back for the other group. We would then be stranded at Elah but they would be able to fix the bus or send us another one. Great, we get on Brother Huntsman's bus and off we go. Five minutes later our bus catches up to us. It decided that it worked again. Because we weren't sure if the bus would be able to get back into gear if we stopped for a half hour we didn't get to stop at all. Thus, I didn't get to throw rocks. I was pretty disappointed but I guess we will just have to do it as a family when I get back :).