Endure Fort» Bethlehem

Holy Land Collage's

Chris Hoskins — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:40:18 +0000

So I’ve been having fun with my holy land trip photos and photoshop…

Bethlehem 'security' wall collage

this next one is of a bench that was outside a museum on the shores of Galilee that had the remains of a 1st century fishing boat on display….

Galilean Identity Bench

The bench reads: “My identification with the Galilee and with my home in the Galilee came to me naturally. My home is here in the rocky land of the Galilee.” Yigal Allon

Christmas!?

Chris Hoskins — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 01:07:33 +0000

Hope all of you had a good Christmas. I certainly had a very enjoyble day, from being woken at 8am by Linda’s excited parents, to an awesome dinner where I ate loads, to trying out my new Gorilla Tripod. We were notciably absent from any sort of Church activity :-/ I’m ny required to do much in Portlethen services, and Linda’s parents Church had no Christmas day service. So the only service we were at was the 8pm at Penicuik North Kirk, the Church Jonnie’s Dad is minister at. It was a really good service, lovely songs and readings, I found myself thinking back to my experiences in Israel alot. Wondering wat things were like for the people we met in the unreconized villages, in Bethlehem, what it would be like to be in a country where the majority of the population don’t celebrate or care about Christmas…mostly I wondered about the people we saw/met/heard of that would celebrate today for Jesus, and Jesus alone, because they don’t really have much else. I found myself thinking that, in many ways, they must have a much more authentic experience/vew of Christmas than those of us in the west, they don’t have as many consumeristic trappings vying for their attention at this time of year, there seems to be so much more space and time made for the worship aspect of Christmas. Maybe thats just something I need to work on and not the whole western world! Jonnie’s Dad kicked of all these thoughts with his talk, he was speaking about how so many of us fall into the trap of celebrating Christmas without really remembering Jesus…quite thought provoking.
It was a wierd Christmas, family wise. It didn’t really feel like Christmas to most of us, until today. I don’t think any of us realised how much we were going to miss Iona. It was sad to think about how this was meant to be her first Christmas…….

Trip to the Holy Land…..part 1…..

Chris Hoskins — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:45:46 +0000

So I haven’t blogged in ages, but I’ve been doing plenty of mulling in preparation to blog!
As you may know already, on November 20th myself and 11 others from the Church of Scotland flew out to the Holy Land for an 8 day pilgrimage. As well as myself, the merry band consisted of: Steve Mallon, Jen Zeilinski, Fiona Fidgin (Fidge), Jane McCarthy, Andi Michie, Jonnie Clipston, Rachel Hutcheson, Nicola Whyte, Linda Pollock , Suzi Farrant and Graham Allison. It was a great group to be a part of and we shared many awesome moments!

Now, this blog post is just a brief introduction to my thoughts from this pilgrimage. We experienced far too much to get it all down in one post, it might take quite a few, so bear with me!
We spent the first half of the week staying at the The Scots Hotel in Tiberias and the second half of the week at the St Andrews Guest House in Jerusalem. I have to say, so many of the places and the things we saw blew my mind, I still can’t quite belive I was there!

I will be adding some photos to my blog post on the pilgrimage, but if you’re on facebook, you could check out the full, comprehensive selection there, as well as a couple of videos!

A brief rundown of the trip goes like this:
Thursday 20th: Leave Glasgow early morning and arrive in Tel Aviv early evening, then bus to Tiberias.
Friday 21st: Bus to Nazareth, see some awesome places from the precipice, visit replica 1st century farm, visit 2 of the churches in Nazareth.
Saturday 22nd: Hope to attend a messianic Jew service of worship, visit to an unrecognized village, visit to a Church where one of the groups churches was hoping to link with (Suzi’s church in Linlithgow).
Sunday 23rd: Sail on Lake Galilee, visit the Capernaum, Visit St Peter’s Primacy and visit the Mount of the beatitudes.
Monday 24th: Drive from Tiberias, through the Jordan valley, to Qumran, then go for a “swim” in the dead sea, then on to Jerusalem. In the afternoon we visited Bethlehem and the Wi’am centre there.
Tuesday 25th: Visit the Yad Vashem (Jewish holocaust memorial museum) in morning, visit Tabeetha school in Joppa in the afternoon.
Wednesday 26th: All day; discover Jerusalem; including walking the stations of the cross, going to gethsemane and the wailing wall.
Thursday 27th: Attempt visit to the UN in Jerusalem, then free time.
Friday 28th: Fly home…

thats the trip in a nutshell. I’ll be coming back to look at specific aspects of the trip more closely over the next few days.

peace out

Chris