Thanksgiving in Spokane

For Thanksgiving we drove up to Spokane and spent Thanksgiving with Tianna and her family.  Doranda and her family also drove up to Spokane so we had a lot of people there.

 Jim with the big turkey.  Tianna made lots of good food and it was great.

 The little kids waiting patiently for their food.  Here we see James, Tucker, Scarlett, Penelope, and Leon.

 A table for the older kids, with Ashton, James, and Dallen.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  The thing we're most thankful for is all our wonderful children and grandchildren.  Also our parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews.  Hope everyone had a good time.

Trip to Arizona

We went down to Arizona to see our parents.  Grandma Swift is sick and was in the hospital for five nights.  We got a hospital bed for her and she's home now.  Grandpa is going to take care of her with some hospice help.

We also saw Grandma and Grandpa Rucker.  Here they are with Jacquelyn, Linda, Conni, Cathi, Duane, and Roger.

Day 10 Israel - Sea of Galilee

We spent this day touring about Galilee where Jesus spent a lot of his ministry.

 First thing in the morning we got on a boat on the Sea of Galilee.

The boat was wooden to give the feel of boats in the time of Jesus.

 Elder Madsen gave a great talk.  He talked about the events in the bible when Jesus was on the Sea of Galilee, like calling his disciples or calming the sea during a storm.  He also talked about the time Jesus walked on water and Paul walked on water too.

 Here a view of the land where Jesus taught from the boat and also gave the Sermon on the Mount.

 We landed and Elder Madsen talked to us about the events at this spot where the Sermon on the Mount took place.

 In the church here you can see all the beatitudes.  It's in Latin and Beati means blessed.

 This park is where the Sermon on the Mount took place.

 Next we went to Capernaum where Jesus spent a lot of his ministry, and hence it's now called the City of Jesus.  He performed a lot of miracles here.

 Some ruins of an ancient synagogue at Capernaum.  Jesus probably spoke taught here.   This is where there was a small fishermen's village and Jesus met the man who asked him to heal his sick daughter.  Jesus then went to his home and raised the young maiden back to life, saying Talitha cumni, which means arise little damsel or little lamb..

 More ruins.  They believe the mother in law of Peter lived here and Peter lived there with her at times.

 Next we went further north to a rocky place where the water flows out of the mountain, a natural spring.  This is where David was hiding and Saul came there and David could have killed him but he didn't.

 We saw the old fortress city of Dan.  Which was the northern most tribe.  They discovered this when modern Israeli's were digging fortifications to protect Golan Heights from the Syrians.

 This was a great city of Israel at one time and the Ten Tribes built a temple here to compete with the temple Judah had in Jerusalem.

 Some trenches the Israeli's built overlooking the Golan Heights.

 Saw some troops on maneuvers when we hiked up a big hill to overlook the valley.

Day 9 Israel - Masada

Today was mostly a travel day as we left Egypt and went into Israel road the tour bus all the way to our hotel in Tiberias.  We had a very long bus ride and a time consuming border crossing.  We passed Lot's Wife Monument. We did get to stop at Masada.

We saw an actual Jewish Rabbi who was copying the Torah by hand onto a scroll, just like they've done for centuries.

 We got to take a tram up to the top of Masada.  This was an old fortress build by Herod the Great.  Later it was used by the Jews during their revolt from the Roman Empire.  After Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans, this was their last resort of retreat where they tried to hold out.

 This is a cistern on top.  They were for storing water which they collected when it rained through a system of stone gutters.

 Here's where the tram arrived at the top.

 A view back off the mountain that shows how far up we were. Doug walked/ran all the way down.

Masada is a dome shaped flat top mountain and the fortress there was considered impregnable.  They built a wall all around the top and also Herod built a palace there.

 Some of the ruins on top.

 They held out for a long time against the Romans

You can see the ruins of a Roman encampment way down off the mountain.(It is in the middle of the picture, the darker square area.)  The Romans sent the Tenth Legion and 15,000 troops to lay siege to Masada and the 960 people there.  Romans built a wall all around the bottom of the mountain so no one could escape.  Then they built a massive ramp all the way to the top.  Then pushed up the ramp a giant siege tower with a battering ram.  There was a terrible battle but they finally breached the entrance.  The next day when they entered they found the Jewish defenders dead from a mass suicide.  There was only  one women and  couple children alive to tell the story.

Israel now considers Masada and their sacrifice as a symbol of the fight for liberty.  They said at the end, they would rather die as free men than live as slaves.

Day 8 Egypt - Red Sea

We spent the day today at our resort hotel at Taba on the Red Sea. This was a resting day and not a sightseeing day.   We decided to do an extra excursion--snorkeling.

The highlight of the day was a boat trip out to an island to so some snorkeling. We could see Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia from the boat.

 This island had a fortress on it built by King Saladin, the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria.  He led the Muslims in fights against the crusaders and fought many battles against Richard the Lionhearted.  At the end they became friends.

 There were coral reefs around the island and that's where we got to do the snorkeling.

 A view of the coral there and some colorful fish. This is not a picture we took and the colors were not as bright as this, but it was great. 

We even saw some elusive Lion Fish.

 A view of the Red Sea from the back of our boat.

 The beach and a camel at the life guard station by our hotel.

Sunrise on the Red Sea.  This is the view from the balcony in our room. The buffet food at this hotel was also good, but not as great as at the other hotel and the ship.

Day 7 Egypt - Luxor

Last day on the Nile Cruise.  We visited two more temples, the ones near Luxor,  These were the most fantastic of all.

The first place was at Karnnak Temple, also called temple of temples because at these temple grounds were several temples, built and added to by 30 different pharaohs over the years.

These are our two guides.  We had the girl for the our bus, red bus, and the yellow bus had the guy.

 The roads leading to the temple area were lined with sphinx's.  This one ran for many miles all the way from the temple area at Karmak to the temple at Luxor.  These had the body of a lion and head of a ram.  Ram is symbol of the idolatrous god Amun.  Karmak is the largest ancient religious site in the world and was the center of their worship at its time.  During its height over 80,000 slaves worked here serving the pharaohs and their guests and worshipers.

 These temple areas were built by the Ptolemic Era pharaohs.

 Massive columns all crowded with carvings and filling the area so succeeding pharaohs could write about their lives and great accomplishments.

 The obelisk here is 97 feet tall and weighs 323 tons. There use to be 3 obelisk standing, but one was for the woman Pharaoh and her son destroyed it when she died.  He was upset because he should have been the Pharaoh instead of her, so after she died he tried to destroy anything that was built for her.  She was the one who convinced the high priest to say she was a descendant of  a God (who spent one night with her) so she could be the Pharaoh.

 This is at Luxor which inspired the attractions at Las Vegas.  We saw Holy of Holies in each temple where only the pharaoh and high priests could go.  We also saw a tree of life carving where the pharaoh had his name engraved on a leaf.  Also carvings of judgement.  If your heart weighed less than a feather you were okay and were given an Ankh which was the key to eternal life.  If your heart weighed too much because of misdeeds then a hideous idolatrous godlike dog would eat your heart and you were condemned.

 This one family came up to Jacquelyn as ask if they could take her picture with their baby.  We took a picture also.

We took a plane from Luxor to an Egyptian resort town of Taba on the Red Sea.