On day 2 of the trip, we found ourselves roasting in the hot Jordan sun as we trekked towards the Jordan river, where Christ was baptized by his cousin John. A week later, I went with the Jordanians to Israel, where there was another baptism site where Jesus was baptized by John. Apparently, there are four different sites, where 4 different Christian sects insist Christ was really baptized. I'm not really sure where my allegiance lies . . . so many choices! The riverbank had a guard to make sure none of us got the brilliant idea to escape to Israel. The river itself is, as you can see from the photo, a lazy, greenish soup. It was great to be there, though.
Right beside the river, on the Jordanian side, is a beautiful Greek Orthodox Church. The Eastern style is my favorite - the round golden domes, the icons on the inside. This church is actually fairly new - it was built seven years ago. I'm not sure how many parishioners it retains, though. It's kind of in the middle of the desert. After being scorched by the sun for a while here and having visited the baptism site, we decided it was high time to visit the dead sea. There was a great resort with swimming and a slide, plus access to the salty dead sea, where we floated around for a while. Note: it is unwise to swim freestyle in the dead sea. My eyes burned.
After the dead sea, we traveled to Aqaba to call it a night at Abouna's sister Theresa's house.
She is my mother-in-Jordan. When I had a fever the second week I was in Jordan, she nursed me back to health with soup, juice, water, medicine, etc. She's great. Aqaba was our base of operations for the next 3 days. Stay tuned for our visit to Petra, which is one of the world's new 7 wonders!
1 comment:
very nice man ...
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