Land of Our Spiritual Roots
On February 26th, 2006, nineteen pilgrims left Texas, bound for the Middle East. Being the resident travel junkie, I was thrilled to organize the trip and tag along. The study tour included participants from six different congregations. What a joy to know we would soon be seeing the land of the Bible with our own eyes. As it turned out, it was a trip that would forever change our hearts toward the region and it's people. We were traveling on the heels of the recent election in Israel that transferred Palestinian leadership to Hamas. It was also just a few short weeks before Israel would elect a new Prime Minister. You might say (as many did), "Are you crazy? How can you travel to the Middle East at a time like this? All I ever see on the news is fighting and conflict." But we knew better. Our first trip was in March of 2001, only six months after Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, which sparked the current Palestinian uprising (a.k.a. "Intifada"). We had su