The Church of the Holy Sepulcher...visiting restricted areas :)

So, on December 2nd, we (Sarah Ingalls, Steph Price, Nathan Mahler, and me) went out after doing Humanitarian kits (hey we met our goal for the semester of doing 10,000 kits! We've been having little humanitarian kit days for an hour or two throughout the semester, and on Wednesday we made the goal! Horray!)

We decided we wanted to go to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and see if we could go into the Relic room. Well, that didn't happen because the Greek Orthodox monk who has the key to the reliquary wasn't there...but the doorman (who, coinsidentially enough, is a Muslim man, because all the different denominations fight over who would get the key if it was left to a Christian...), told us when to come back, so we will do that sometime.

Well, since we couldn't go into the reliquary, Nathan introduced us to an Armenian Deacon that he had met, Artook. He's really nice, and he took us up into the galleries of the church, and we saw the parts that tourists and visitors rarely get to see! It was really cool. He even let Nathan try on some priest robes...kind of funny. He was a really nice guy.


Nathan in priest's robes :)

This is the Holy Sepulcher from the upper galleries in the dome :) I was totally giddy the whole time getting to be up there.

The entrance to the sepulcher...

Then after that he took us down into the basement of the church, down where the original foundations are, and also where people rarely get to go. It was so fun! Nathan was climbing all around down there. It was so sweet. I was trying not to be a tourist and take pictures, but I did get some.


Him leading us across the church to their section of the foundations..

This is the line of the foundation from Helena's original church and the one built on top of it after that one was destroyed by the Muslim invasion. The next one was a crusader church.

This is us under the church. From left to right, it's Sarah, Steph, Nathan, Artook, and me. Sorry the lighting isn't the best...the spotlight right behind us didn't help much with that.

Anyway, we talked with him for a long time after that and he told us that he has about a year until he can become a priest, but he has to decide if he wants to have a family or not. There are two options, he can become a priest and get married and then not really progress anymore up the chain of the Armenian priesthood, or he can remain unmarried and become a priest, which will give him the ups to continue. Interesting.

Anyway, he let us help this lady light her keepsake candles. What you do is buy a bundle and then light them with holy fire, and then extinguish them and take them home. So we did that...and then he gave us our own little bundles as gifts and let us light them with holy fire. It was so cool! I love being here longer term and getting to do sweet stuff that we probably wouldn't get to do otherwise. I love it!

This is me lighting candles with the Holy Fire from the Sepulcher, right at the entrance.

We didn't have much time, just a couple hours before the sunset, so we went home after that, but it was an amazing day!