Just your average weekend on the world race….
Jesus commanded us to go into all nations, preaching the gospel and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and The Holy Spirit. I always took this verse for missions, but this weekend I took it for something more. You can only baptize if you have some sort of certificate right? Wrong. Jesus gives us the certificate right there in Matthew when He tells us straight up to baptize. I always thought that’s great for some people, but I’ll never be the one baptizing. This was until my friend Lauren asked me to baptize her. This is the highest privilege and honor I think I have ever been given. And it just so happened that I got to baptize her in the Jordan river. The very same river that Jesus was baptized by John.
There’s nothing that can really follow that up, so just consider this as a side note. Yesterday we woke up at 4 in the morning to go do some wandering business in the desert. We didn’t really know starting out on our six hour hike through the desert that we would be wandering. However, you would think that not bringing a map with us would have been our first clue. Alas, it wasn’t though, so we began our six hours of trekking through the desert on a quest to find the dead sea. We found some ruins. We found a lot of rocky desert hills and valleys. We tried to use the stars as our map. We found a road and a beautiful sunset. But no dead sea. So, after close to four hours of not completely being sure we were going the right way, we found a bus to take us to the dead sea. Literally, it was amazing! I floated in that sea standing up, on my side, on my stomach and sitting up! I tried to sink for longer then three seconds and it was not possible! The bottom was so clear, you could see crystals of salt that looked like jewels! It was beautiful! And of course you have too look beautiful yourself to be in such a beautiful place;-) So clearly, what else would we do but cover ourselves in mud.
This weekend I also went to En Gedi, where David and his men were hiding in a cave and then could have attacked King Saul, but didn’t. I also got to see Nazareth and Caperneum and the sea of Galilee! To end this great weekend off, today I am leaving for Egypt! We are going to see the pyramids tomorrow and then tomorrow night we fly out for Nairobi.
