Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

Friday 29 May continued
Sadly, this is our last dinner together as our new friends and the rest of tour will get a few hours of sleep tonight and leave for the Tel Aviv airport in the wee hours of the morning.  We will sleep in, attend Sacrament meeting at the BYU Center, and then catch a bus or taxi to Tel Aviv to see some long long friends from our BYU days.
First, some miscellaneous pictures from our trip:

Debbie and Dr. Brent Jackson

Fred, Jill and Kathy 

86 year old Audrey and granddaughter Lori

saw several heavily-armed groups of Israeli soldiers in the Old City

tractor truck 

in Bethelhem 

in Palestine

Israeli 

It was a wonderful Sacrament meeting sitting in that beautiful chapel with that incredible view of Jerusalem's Old City while partaking of the Sacrament and thinking of Jesus's life there and sacrifice for all of mankind, but more importantly, for Roy and I.  Very humbling.
We had a hard time finding a taxi to take us to Tel Aviv since it was the Sabbath and it cost us over $100.  Yikes!!!
We had a nice evening enjoying our motel room's beautiful view of Tel Aviv and the Med.

31 May, Sunday.
We had a wonderful reunion dinner with Gilad and Dalya Gluzman.  We met them back at BYU in 1980 while they were there as exchange students and then again briefly in Davis, California.  Sadly we lost contact with them over the years but Gilad had recently found Roy on LinkedIn.  We were excited to see them again!  I would have recognized Dalya anywhere, Gilad, no.  We had heard they were divorced and it was hard to meet Gilad's new wife but wonderful to meet their daughter Lior.
Dalya is a high school history teacher and Gilad is a partner in a business that makes fuel pellets for stoves out of olive wood (mostly from Spain and north Africa, and not Israel).

new wife, Gilad, Roy, Deb and Dalay

Dalya and Lior 

Tonight we fly back to Tbilisi and leave for Texas on Tuesday.  This has been an exhausting, wonderful trip of a lifetime.  I would love to return and spend more time exploring this incredible country.  At no time did I feel unsafe.  As Michael counseled, we should all pray for peace for Israel and I will but I fear there will be no peace until the Savior comes again.