Church

Yesterday was Sunday and we didn't want to miss yet another week of church, but we still couldn't find the one we were wanting to go to. I tried to call them several times, but always with no answer. Out of desperation I went to the internet to see if I could find a quick substitute for this week. I did find one that was closer to our home and, amazingly, had a parking lot of its very own - a rare find out here. It is Southern Baptist, but we needed somewhere to go, so we went. Let me just say that I have lots of friends who belong to this denomination and they are all very lovely people, but this is definitely not the church for us. The people here were friendly, and their heart was in the right place, but there were too many major, important differences for us to be able to join with them. My husband is still contemplating what we're going to do about the other church that we haven't found yet. It's in such a bad neighborhood, and we would stick out so badly. He's just not sure if it would be the safest thing for us to do. Please pray for us to make the right decision about this.

Later in the evening we went to look at a car that someone had for sale. We're still borrowing a car from the Consulate right now, so we need to hurry and find something of our own. Giving directions in this country is pretty hard, so all I had were a street name and my map skills. We set out in the general direction and I thought that I would just navigate as we go. One problem with that theory. Take a look at this map:

Okay, maybe it's not really a map of Jerusalem, but if you added some street names you might not be able to tell the difference! It was almost amusing trying to find this particular road we were looking for. We would need to turn right, but it was a one way street. We couldn't circle around because the next street was only one way in the other direction. We missed the street we should have taken, but we couldn't turn around because the street we were on was one way. We finally found the street we needed to go to, but it was blocked by a barricade. Imagine a long road with a cement barricade blocking this one intersection, for no apparent reason. We finally ended up parking the car where we were and walking the rest. It literally felt like one of those mazes you did when you were a kid. We did end up finding the place and we liked the car, so hopefully the sale will go through soon.

One thing we were not expecting about Jerusalem was the weather. Israel is generally thought of as desert, but Jerusalem is an exception to that. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it is lush and green, but it's not desert either. The "natives" here are always talking about how hot it is and stressing to us that we need to stay hydrated. We find this amusing coming from Okinawa. We actually think it's pretty cool most days. And there's practically zero humidity, so it really does feel nice here. But it sure can get windy!! We were not expecting that at all. The nights are really bad where we are. If we were in Okinawa I would be checking the typhoon condition! I like the weather here overall. It's definitely a nice break from the summers we've been used to.