Seeing the US via a phone call and visitors

This is inside The Church of St. Peter (hexagonal church from last post).

Again the inside of Church of St. Peter.
Me on the steps to Church of St. Peter.
Our American visitors and us on the Galilee
This is a artifact that was collected from the Galilee in the 1980's. It has been dated about 2000 years old. It is a 10 meter boat. Packed in mud and found during a drought, to excavate took extreme care as the wood broke down as you touched it. They surrounded it with polyethelene foam and wax to absorb into the wood to make it stronger again.



I was able to make the first phone call home about a week ago but my phone card only had 8 minutes on it so the conversation with my mom was short and jumped around. BUT TODAY (Sunday) I got my Skype up and running (though I cannot call landlines or cells yet) and made a call home! I have been able to email everyone but that is not the same as talking on the phone. My parents bought a computer so we were able to see each other with the video cameras too. It was awesome! I think I had a permanent smile on my face the whole time and of course they did too (happy to see me but I think also to fiddle around with their new toy).


The American Presidential election is watched around the clock around the world. From my study abroad experience junior year I realized how little I knew about US politics, how much everyone else pays attention to what the US does (we have a huge influence on the world), and how little I paid attention to foreign politics. In the last year and a half I have tried to remedy that problem. Israeli government is largely supported by our current US administration; from talking with the monks here in Tabgha, Ibrahim, and reading local news I have found out that many of the younger Jewish population supports Obama because they are not interested in who possesses what and who controls what. Israel has mandatory military service and after the Golan War two years ago the young population really have grown tired of all the tension, violence, and anger. I have been told that the older population supported Bush in the past but now have also been swaying towards Obama. I will be really excited to see how the rest of the world reacts to November 4.

We have four American visitors here in Tabgha. They are the benefactors to a peace project called Beit Benedict. It encourages interfaith relationships between the three major religious communities: Jewish, Moslem, and Christian. It will have its headquarters in Jerusalem but will take place also outside Jerusalem. The supporters were Dennis and Rose from Naperville and Bob and Valerie from St. Helena. I use their names because I would like them and you to know how much they meant to me, still yet in the age of technology having a familiar voice abroad-American English-is a comfort and even the simplest comment of how they admired us for our work built me up. They were extremely nice people who invited us to spend the day with them around the Galilee and also brought us treats from America (candy and gum, the gum here is not the same). I admire them for their trust and enthusiasm in a project that so many people could just shrug off and feel has no importance, this project carries great importance. They were accompanied by Helene (American) and Fr. Johannas (Slovakian) both people who had spent time here in Tabgha, I had been in contact with before I departed the states and gave me much help in preparation, and are helping coordinate the Beit Benedict project. I cannot say enough about these two either they are very genuine, supportive, and kind; as they left I had to turn them down for the ump-teenth time that there was no need to send anything from the states back here to Leither and I as we have everything we need.
Normally every night, minus Wednesday and Sunday, we have a reading for all of supper. We eat supper in silence with only the person reading allowed talking privileges. Leither and I are the only English speakers here so all the supper readings are in German. I am familiar with this procedure from my short time spent at the SJU monastery so it is nothing new but it is empty significance to me because of my inability to understand all of the reading. With the event of our new American visitors Fr. Basilius asked Leither or I if one of us would read the supper reading in English. 5 minutes before Father had to go to prayer he asked me to come into his office. He had a letter that the Pope had recently written and was going to give this to me to read. I know very little about Pope Benedict except that him and I disagree on a lot of issues and I did not feel strong reading this mostly because I could not imagine it to be very entertaining (sorry to the monastic community). The supper readings should have some faith base to them whether it is news, proclamation, or history and Father did not like my quick suggestion to read a story instead (I was hoping to find a favorite baseball story of mine Attitude by Garrison Keillor). So I quickly ran through a mental checklist of what was needed in the reading and I thought of Martin Luther King Jr. I proposed the most familiar and my favorite writing Letter from a Birmingham Jail and the Father said “yes”, he had no background on the significance of the piece but since it was MLK Jr. I think that is why he was okay with it. As I stood before everyone reading for the entire meal I was overcome with humility and realization. I have never felt more proud to read a piece of literature in my life and as I read the words on the page strong emotion stirred in my mind and heart. If you were to just chang the group you are writing to and this letter could be used universally. I was unsure if it would go over well with the guests and the Germans but I felt reassured as after they finished eating I was commended by all the visitors and almost all the Germans on the text and by the way I read it (I would like to think the ones who did not praise the piece had a hard time understanding English).