We Will See You Again

This post has been sitting in my draft box for over a year now. I wanted to post it a year ago but it never felt ready to post. After journeying to the Holy Land, the experience solidified my faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior and that if we accept Him into our heart we will be reunited in heaven along with our loved ones that have departed before us.

Two years ago, two dear families tragically lost their sons.

Nathan, age 10, was the youngest son of friends that we just met a few years ago in HK.  He was also the cousin of Shawna, Emily's former classmate and one of my former students.

A sweet quiet fun loving boy who loved to run around outside, play video games, hang out with his big brother and his dog, Dukie.

We met his whole family, big brother Marcus (who's the same age as Emily) and mom, Wendy and dad, Levan. I got to spend some quality time with Wendy and we talked a lot about why God allows suffering to happen; why prayers are not answered the way we would like them to be; and how to keep our faith in God strong when it is tested so severely.

Nathan and Hannah in HK

You see, Nathan was diagnosed with liver cancer at the very young age of 3. He had a tumor growing on his liver since then. In January 2013 he had the tumor and liver removed and received a liver transplant. His body was accepting this new liver and he was gaining strength and stamina. But in July, he started having pain in his pelvic area and after some tests it was determined that the cancer spread into his spine and pelvic area. He received chemo but it was not able to eradicate the cancer that was quickly spreading in his little body. He went to be with our Lord on September 27, 2013.

Then a month later, on October 27, while we were at church we heard the horrific news that Jason, our good friends Jay and Lisa's 17 year old son was killed in a car accident. Our church family immediately sobbed and grieved for this high school senior who had so many plans for his future.

His pallbearers were his best friends..all high schoolers

The memorial service was filled with everyone who loved Jason, Jay, Lisa and Danika (their daughter).

Pastor Kevin shared about the choices we make in this lifetime here on earth and that it will have eternal consequences.

Our friends, Jay and Lisa shared loving letters to their son now in heaven.

Though his life ended too quickly, his memory will forever be in hundreds of hearts, many of whom made a decision that afternoon to ask Jesus in their heart and to have eternal life in heaven. His purpose in life continues through his parents, sister and friends.

Jason's banner at the reception

Today, as I commemorate Jason and Nathan's short young lives, I no longer question God, "Why?" I will definitely ask Him when I'm in heaven. There are many things I do not understand that God allows to happen. But I do know that He is God and He loves us and He is with us in the good and the bad. Why does God allow suffering? I do not know. But I do know He is our Hope when we are suffering.

We will see you again, Nathan and Jason. We will see you again.

The Ancient and the Now

For 15+ years we've been wanting to go to Israel with our former Pastor and his wife. They've been taking a group every 5 years.

With Pastor Sherman & Marti in Corinth

We haven't been able to go previously because the girls were either too young or it was the wrong time and the girls were in school. This time it was perfect! It was right after school ended and the girls were old enough to be seasoned travelers. Also it was rumored that this might be Pastor's last time taking a large group. So when we heard, we jumped on the bandwagon, roped in some of our dear friends, and off we went.

People were short back in those days

We knew that this would not be a relaxing vacation. (Come on.. does 69 locations, 8 flights, 5 hotels in 16 days sound relaxing to you?!?!) We were on a very tight schedule: on the bus by 8am sometimes 7:30am which meant breakfast at 7am which meant wake-up call at 6:00am every day and we get back to the hotel for dinner by 5:00pm. Our evenings were open but I was so darn tired I always opted to go to sleep after dinner. My introverted nature desperately needed some alone time. Traveling with 41 people all day long was very tiring sometimes, not that I didn't like the company. I so loved the company and was thrilled that we were able to travel with other families whom I have gotten to know and cherish!

This is Gamla: which has been called the "Masada of the North," where the Jews fought off the Romans several times before falling.

This was the first time that Pastor took whole families along and that was such a blessing! Youth want to hang around youth not their parents. We were so fortunate that this group of kids hung around together a lot!

Our group of 'young ones'

This is their usual section of the bus.

Our next stop: an ancient Talmudic Village and Synagogue in Katzrin Park.

Katzrin is an ancient Jewish village located in the Golan Heights.

 This showed us what a traditional village/home would have looked like during Jesus' time.

Some buildings have been reconstructed to show how they lived at the time.

Fancy door or window?

As you can see it's made of stone and was underground to keep cool and safe. An integral part of the village was the synagogue where the people would gather to worship.

We were also able to see the Syrian Border, which is just on the other side of the white UN buildings.

It was very sobering to think about and pray for the Christians that are currently being persecuted there, knowing that and it was just a hop, skip and a jump from where we were at.

We also met two young men from the States who were serving in Syria with the Flying Doctors of America. They were sharing about the atrocities they saw there and we could not help but pray for these men and the country.

We met Cody and Michael, two Americans on medical missions serving in Jordan and Syria.

I got baptized in the Jordan River along with 11 other wonderful people from our group.

The Jordan River is fed from three independent springs: Banias (Caesarea Philippi), Dan (Tel Dan), and Lebanon (Haspian). All three pour into Sea of Galilee which also flows into the Dead Sea.

I was sprinkle baptized when I was 23 and I knew this was acceptable in God's eyes, but when the opportunity of getting immersion baptized in the same place that Jesus was baptized, I overcame my fear of water and dove in.

All 12 of us ... four were couples!

Life is too short for missed opportunities and I didn't want to miss out on anything and especially didn't want to feel like "I Should Have.. but didn't" when I came home. It was really a once in a lifetime opportunity.

With my friend Helen at the Baptismal Site of Yardenit on the Jordan River

And to have Pastor Sherman baptize me with my husband behind me it felt so right. Definitely one of my highlights of this trip.

It was located just south of the river's mouth to the Sea of Galilee. The water was warm, with fish nipping at our feet.

Afterwards we all loaded onto a boat and took a cruise around the Sea of Galilee.

Galilee cruise: The US flag was raised to our national anthem, followed by worship songs as we cruised on the waters.

Pastor gave a sermonette challenging us to to think about what were we trying to 'catch' as we threw out our net in our life.

The warm waters were calm but the wind can pick up the waves. It is a freshwater lake; there is no word for 'lake' in Hebrew thus they named it a Sea. It is roughly 8 miles wide x 13 miles long.

 Matthew wanted to swim in the three seas: Mediterranean Sea, Sea of Galilee and Dead Sea.

In the Sea of Galilee with David & Leilani

NEXT UP: Jacob, Shiloh and Olive

The Start of a Pilgrimage

At SFO ready and excited to take off!

One week after Emily and I returned from our whirlwind DC/NY trip, our family of four joined 37 additional people to take an incredible pilgrimage into the Holy Land.. not Disneyland, but Jesus' land: Israel.

Tel Aviv Airport at 3:30AM.. Apparently it's hoppin' at all hours of the day and night!

THE STATS
16 Days
3 Countries
8 Flights
5 Hotels
69 Locations
41 Pilgrims
4 Tour guides
1 Emergency dentist visit
1 Temporarily 'lost' member
3 Pickpocket Attempts
2 New friends serving on medical missions
1 Birthday (Scott Wong)
10 hrs/day average touring sites
2 incredible hosts - Pastor & Marti Williams

After we came back we...

Sorted through 4,000+ pictures and hours of video

Created a 28 minute video slideshow and

a 11'x14' 111-page digital album filled with 784 pictures which took

over 80 hours of labor on the computer!

It would take a ton of blog posts for me to cover what we saw and learned, so if you are REALLY interested in hearing about our trip, we'll gladly show you our video and album.

But for this blog, I will try to give you a snippet of what we experienced.

First off, my answer to "How was the trip?" is always:
If you have a relationship with Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you should go to the Holy Land. If you are in ministry and are called to work for Jesus as your profession, you must go to the Holy Land. You have to, have to, have to, I say. The Bible truly comes to life: you understand and see Jesus for real.

Before we arrived in Israel, we had a 7-hour layover in Zurich, Switzerland.

Lovely city

We got a quick day tour of the city. Almost every car is a Mercedes, Audi, BMW, or Porsche (per my husband's observations). We visited the river front and Fraumunster Church: the choir of the abbey includes 5 stained glass windows designed by artist Marc Chagall.

Not a good meal for those who are lactose-intolerant like many Asians I know, including my husband and daughter

Afterwards we ate a traditional Swiss fondue dinner:  a pot of cheese, boiled potatoes, bread, and small salad. We were still hungry afterwards!

In Israel, our tour began before sunrise at Jaffa (Joppa). Jaffa is one of the world's oldest ports, where Jonah set sail for Tarshish (Jonah 1:3-4). King Solomon received materials at this port to build the first temple.

We saw the sun rise!

Then we went to Caesarea Martima which was the largest man-made harbor when it was built in the 1st century by Herod the Great.

An inscription on limestone shows that Pontius Pilate ruled from here.

 In this city Peter baptized the first Gentile who became a Christian: Cornelius, a Roman centurion (Acts 10). Paul spent time here, both as a visitor, in Philip's home (Acts 8), and as a prisoner (Acts 23-26). Excavations uncovered streets, civic buildings, temples, sewage system, amphitheater, hippodrome, and baths.

Behind us is the Mediterranean Sea.

Next was the site of the ancient Battle of Megiddo. It is also prophesied to be the site of Armageddon: the final battle between Jesus and Satan.

Armageddon, as it was written in Revelation 16,  right behind Hannah in the beautiful lush valley of milk & honey

Near the summit of Mt Carmel, a statue commemorates the site of Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18). Here we enjoyed a panoramic view overlooking the Plain of Jezreel.

Below are the ruins underneath the Church of Cana: believed to be the location of the wedding where Jesus changed water into wine (John 2).

We went to the Mount of Beatitudes, where we descended the mountainside where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), heading towards the Sea of Galilee.

While walking down it was easy to imagine the thousands of people on the mountainside listening to Jesus preach.

We ended up at this cove on the northern shore of Sea of Galilee which is where Jesus called his disciples to follow him. Here our group sang "On Holy Ground".

All of us in the Sea of Galilee

And yes.. there were lots of fish!

Capernaum was Jesus' home during his ministry (Matthew 4). Here Jesus performed many miracles, including healing a demon possesed man (Mark 1), and raising from the dead, the daughter of Jairus (Luke 8). A church has been built over Peter's house, where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1).

This was part of Peter's home.

NEXT UP: Peering into a village during Jesus' time, the Syrian border and someone gets baptized in the Jordan River!

Like Magic Part 2

Before I start on our HolyLand recap, I want to finish my magic cleaning tips..

You know I am a clean freak but I am also lazy. Yep! I am very lazy when it comes to cleaning. Such a paradox right?

In my previous post I did ask for tips on cleaning ugly black grout. And Mr. YouTube came through again!

This time it was from "Life As A Twin Mom".

Here's my before and after pictures from my kitchen.

The black grout was all over my sink rim.

But 24 hours later, it looked like this and I didn't scrub a bit.

The back splash was disgusting.

24 hours later it was much better but not all the grout came out. That's because it was really deep behind the grout.

After 20 years, this area was rarely scrubbed down probably because I had a ton of stuff on it.

I did have to use some muscle to scrub this part with Soft Scrub and Mr. Magic Eraser.

So how did I do this? MAGIC! Really. My idea of cleaning is to exert as little amount of energy as possible and the results must be immaculate!

This time I just used these 3 items:

I soaked the salon cotton strips in bleach and placed them over the grout areas and let it soak for a few hours.

Make sure you air out the area you are cleaning. The bleach smell is strong!

The video says it should work within 30 minutes but my grout is 20 years old and I didn't want to take any chances so I let everything soak overnight.

After I removed the cotton strips, it looked great and I just used the magic eraser to touch up other areas that I didn't put bleach on. No need to scrub at all!

My bathtub was so gross I didn't want to embarrass myself even more. (plus I forgot to take the before pictures). But it worked!

So there you have it! I really should replace the grout and scrap everything all clean but I'm lazy remember?

Here's the video for your reference if you want to try it out:

If you have any magic tips for cleaning that does not include hiring someone to come or using a lot of time and energy, please pass them to me! I'd love an easy way to dust without having to move anything!