So we went shopping on Wednesday. Well, rephrase, we went to the Good Samaritan Center with the intent of picking up a few items afterward.
The Good Samaritan Center is a little hole-in-the-wall place in the Old City that serves food to elderly people. They deliver it. It's actually pretty crazy. In Israel they stop taking care of people when they turn 60...which isn't that old. So, so many elderly people, who are in their 80's and 90's here in Jerusalem don't get care (which includes meals and etc.), and wouldn't if not for this center. It's a Christian organization run by a man named Rasha that takes food around to people in need.
So we went to see if we could help. There wasn't anything really that we could do, cause they already took the meals around for the day, but we made arrangements to go back on monday and help them clean up the center for a metting. We sat and talked to an old man named Francis, who was born in Jerusalem but is "from" Syria (didn't get the whole story), and is a Christian. He sang for us, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and a bunch of classics, and then we sang Christmas songs for him and he joined in with us. It was really great. He had a great voice. Really great. It was fun just to hear him talk about his wife and family, and life and everything. He did kind of start bashing on Muslims a little, which was sad, because I have really come to love and respect Muslims here. They're great people, but Francis seemed to have run into some not so great Muslims. Just like when people hate Mormons because they had one bad experience with a Mormon once. It's just too bad.
Anyway, after that we went to pick up a few things, and we wandered into this shop and the guy there started talking to Kathryn. She was taking forever and so I went into see what the conversation was about, and it was (of course) about religion. He was saying that he wanted us to open our ears and listen to his religion and learn about it because our church was missing a lot of stuff. He said that we had our ears closed and were unwilling to learn about his religion. We kept telling him that we would love to learn, and that we have learned a lot while we've been here, but he basically kept calling us ignorant. He then told me that we were young and didn't know what to believe, but that we had a lot to learn. He told us that he didn't mean to insult us...and I straight up said, "You are insulting me. Please don't tell me that I am too young to know what I believe. I would love to tell you about our Church, but I made a promise to not talk about it, on my honor, and I am not going to break my word." Oh yeah, he was saying that we were closing our ears, but he wasn't telling us anything about his religion, just trying to get us to tell him about ours. He actually mentioned Lehi and Nephi and the Liahona, too. So he at least knew the names. Who knows if he had anything to back it up. It was really interesting. He was just so....intesne about it, but at the same time wasn't telling us anything about our religion, just asking us about ours and trying to get us to break. It's an interesting environment we're in over here. There are definitely still people who try to bait us, to get us to talk about the Church.
So, we didn't really take any pictures today, but I thought it should be documented. It was an interesting day.
Gotta Love the Holy Land, right? And I do, don't worry :).
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