Lindsay, Loran and I went into the city today and went over to the wailing wall and saw a couple of bar mitzvahs taking place. My grandma Gerber phrased it perfectly when she said that Jews know how to party!
Everyone was so happy and it totally reminded me of my brother Owen, who is also 13. I think Mormons should do something like this, because it would be another excuse to celebrate!
There are two rival olive wood stores: Jimmy's and Omars. They share a monopoly on Mormon tourists. Personally, I think I like Jimmy's better (mostly because the subject of the carvings make me laugh a little bit, like the Adam and Eve statue...I don't think a typical Mormon would put that one on display). Today, we chatted with an older gentleman named Zacharias or Zak and he was extremely talkative. Fotunately, his english was flawless and he was very open minded, yet proud to be a palistinian. He was the guide for the Glen Beck tour and thought that the mormons that were in the group were fantastic, delightful people, but it made him sad that they were being led astray. I hope to run into him again. I had mentioned in our conversation that my fiance was studying in Amman. I also may or may not have bragged about him being on the Volleyball team... :) Jimmy's nephew was working at the store and mentioned that he had recently graduated from the Jordan University in accounting and was trying to get a scholarship to a gradschool in America. Please pray for all of the students in the middle east that they can find work and that their economies will improve.
My favorite part of the day was when we went and visited a woman named Samah (Sam), whom we had met last week. She is great! We sat and talked with her for a long time and she just told us story after story and made us feel right at home. She poured us tea and it we didn't know exactly what to do, so we just held it for a while and then finally told her that we don't drink tea, because of our religion. She thought it was weird that we couldn't explain our relgion to her because then there would be no way for us to bring people into our relgion. We explained that was the reason we can't talk about it in Jerusalem. She was cool about it, but she told us that she had a lot of mormon cousins in the states and that she thinks that our religons are basically the same. I had the best time talking with her and am happy to be making friends over here.
