Day #3 Jaffa and Tel-Aviv

Jaffa (or Joppa as it is in our Bibles) is the port city where Jonah went to run from the Lord's call to Nineveh. Joppa is also where the Apostle Peter was staying when he received a vision from God concerning the Gentiles with their non-kosher diet.

After touring the Ilana Goor art museum (don't worry, none of us had heard of her before either) we enjoyed lunch in the home of an Arab Christian named Doris. She shared openly about the challenges living in Israel as a minority Catholic with an increasing Muslim population. After lunch we toured Tel-Aviv and enjoyed a stroll up and down the open market.

Our last stop for the day was to the site where the former Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated. Interestingly, our tour guide shared that until the assassination of the Prime Minister the maximum punishment for any crime was a prison sentence of 25 years. The country changed that law so that Rabin's assassin would spend the rest of his life in prison.

Before dinner we gathered on the roof-top patio of our hotel for evening devotions. We read from 1 Kings 18 in anticipation of our visit to Mt. Carmel tomorrow. The meal tonight was "on our own" but we still ate together as a group. It was rather comical ordering from the menu and then trying to figure out our bills which were all in Hebrew.

After dinner Kendra and I enjoyed looking around the large mall just a block down from our hotel. The mall itself was pretty much like any of ours in the States, with two exceptions. First, we passed through a security checkpoint at the entrance. Second, pets are allowed to go shopping with you! (Kendra's ready to move to Israel. She and I both thought it'd be very cool to take Doogle to the Galleria!)