June 2, 2002

Many of our group left late night and early this morning. After breakfast, we left Damascus with five others, taking a van-taxi from the hotel, heading off for the Jordanian border, making our way to the northern city of Irbid. From there, the rest of our small group headed to either Amman or Jerusalem. We headed towards the northern bridge to the Galilee, dropped by our bus along the main road. "Five minutes to the bridge," we were told. Half of a hot, heavy hour later, we arrived at bemused Jordanian security (we encounter a lot of bemused security in this part of the world), passing on to the Israeli side near the town of Beit Shan (once called Beisan). We were stopped and our bags searched thoroughly by Israeli security, the first time that has ever happened in our two years here. But the security people were very polite; after determining we had no explosives, they carefully helped repack the kaffiyes and Palestinian and Iraqi flag decals back into our bags. All in all, from the time we first entered the Jordanian side of the bridge, it took two hours to get across.

Marthame preaches at the English Hospital chapel in Nazareth.

We arrived in Nazareth in time to clean up, take a power-nap and head up to the English hospital for their English-language evening service. Marthame had been invited to preach, sharing with them a few moments of our journey with the churches through Lebanon and Syria. Considering how many countries we had traversed in one day, we were eager to get to bed early and sleep, sleep, sleep.