We first went to the Mount Beatitudes Church (another Catholic Church). This was where the Catholics believed the beatitudes were given to the crowds from Jesus. There are a ton of mountains surrounding the region though, and of course there are other shrines on other mountains dedicating those to be the site...
But this was very pretty- surrounded by a wonderful rose garden. The roses here are so big and smell so fragrant! The church was an octagon- it was very simple on the inside with the beatitudes around the dome surrounding the altar.
We then left and went to St. Peter's Primacy- where Jesus 'gave' the church to Peter. We had a wonderful Eucharist in this circle grove overlooking the Sea of Galilee, and then we had some time to look over the sea and reflect.
Next, we were off to Capernaum. Jesus did A LOT here according to scripture and they have the house of Peter's mother-in-law preserved. Now, they put a church on top of this house. HOWEVER, they made it so the church 'levitated' above it and did not disturb the site. They wanted to make it look like a boat (Capernaum was a tiny fishing town) but it looks more like a space ship :)
Then we were off again to eat lunch. Starving, we had the typical 9 mini plates of various 'salad' and hummus plus pita and then our main meal came! A fish!!! A whole fish!! So that was a lot of fun diving into that :0
Then, we got on a boat and ventured out in the Sea of Galilee. It was just beautiful. We were out there for probably an hour and the waves and the wind were so peaceful. It was great being on the same lake that Jesus was on!!!
And finally, we went to the Jordan River to renew our baptismal vowels. Now, we thought this would be a magical experience, and it was, but in a different way. This had to be the Disneyland of the Jordan River! They had a huge gift store (of course) and then they had 'stalls' for groups to go to. The water was freezing! And very swampy, but it was still pretty cool. And, the kinda creepy thing was that everyone was walking around in these white baptismal robes with a screen-printed Jesus getting baptized on the front. Little did they know, those suckers are SEE-THROUGH after the dip in that water. And they record these on Video and they have them playing at the end of the 'ride' just like roller coasters. hahaha. It was still neat, and although that wasn't the real site of the baptism (it is closer to Jordan and that is serving as an international border so we can't go in those waters) it was still neat.
We went back for din and had a lecture on our Spiritual Geographies and what would be the center of our maps...
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