Smithsonians: Gethsemane

Friday, November 22, 2019

Gethsemane

Our first stop today was the Orson Hyde Memorial Park. The bus dropped us off a little bit away and we walked there. There was a good view of the BYU-Jerusalem Center as we walked.

BYU-Jerusalem

Orson Hyde Memorial Park

There was this pavilion place where we were able to have a few lessons. We learned about Orson Hyde dedicating Israel and how he talked about the Jews' return. Mark did a presentation where it showed a timeline of how many Jews lived in Israel and how many immigrated each year. One day had about 14,000 Jews immigrate here, or something crazy like that. Now Israel is almost 75% Jewish. We also talked about the last week of the Savior's life. Rachel led everybody in a song called Gethsemane. Her kids have listened to that song every night for eight years. I remember them singing it at Marie's baptism. We then got time to walk around the gardens. I always pictured Gethsemane as a quiet peaceful place, kind of in the middle of nowhere. That is not the case. There were about a zillion cars honking during the entire presentation. Didn't expect that!

Dad

Mark, Stephanie, Ron, Rachel

Stephanie eating rosemary from the bushes. I did not like it as much as Sharon.

Dad, Sharon, and two others

Dad and Uncle John

This is silly, but the thing I was most excited about in Gethsemane was all the cacti! It was like a hello from Stockton. It made me so happy! I took a lot of pictures of them.

Stephanie

Olive tree with cacti surrounding it

Stephanie

Jordyn, John, Dad, Dave (Dave's wife died from ALS last year)

Dad, Mark, Stephanie, Jordyn, Steve, Rachel, Sharon, Renee, John

The only flowers I saw in Gethsemane. They were up high.

The church at Gethsemane. They actually let us walk in and take pictures during their service. There were a lot of people doing that...not just us. Funny to think about a ton of tourists coming into sacrament meeting to take pictures. That would be distracting!