At assembly this morning, a student showed Marthame a huge shell, which he found near his home in Jenin. Later at breaktime, the kids excitedly displayed it for Elizabeth. It is a little disconcerting to be so close to such things, especially as kids parade them about.

We're on the Orthodox calendar here, regardless of denomination, as a sign of Christian unity.

One question she asked was why Palestinians had refused the goods sent to the camp from the US. He responded that the helicopters, tanks, missiles, and bullets that destroyed Jenin Camp were from America - how could people be expected to forget that and accept gifts? If America didn't want this disaster, then it should have prevented it.

You can't get used to this scene, though. Men carrying armfuls of clothes, children digging at the rubble with bent pipes, women just sitting and despairing. This work will carry on for a long, long time, but the journalists and international attention will likely go away. It's awful. Truly awful.

People were sitting in the second stories of half-destroyed buildings that surround the central area, sipping on tea and surveying the destruction. Here and there you see something in the rubble that has not been totally destroyed - a baby's chair, a section of furniture, a piece of a garment. There is a hushed awe about this place. Rarely do you find silence in Arab society, but here in this gaping wound is silence.

We shared news from Zababdeh with him, and shared embarrassment at Bush's description of Sharon as "a man of peace" - "a man of pieces," Abuna noted. Probably more accurate.

While in the Galilee, we were able to see our dear friend from Zababdeh. He has hopes of finishing up the Melkite ordination process, but in the meantime, he's spent two months doing construction work instead.

Among the prayer requests shared were the needs of the thirty-some patients of the hospital from the Jenin Camp. Among them are seven who went without dialysis for the last couple weeks, one of whom will likely die. These people were snuck out of Jenin through the hills by doctors and medical staffers concerned about their condition. They were turned away from several hospitals before they found unconditional acceptance from the Anglicans.

There was a cursory search of all of our bags, accompanied by the somewhat apologetic and now-familiar phrase of "sorry, we have to do this - we're just following orders."

People are afraid. Everyone's trying to guess what'll happen next, and many are assuming that the Israelis will eventually do house-to-house searches in Zababdeh. In the afternoon, many families on the outskirts of town were relocating to stay with relatives in locations that are considered safer.