May 2007 was only the second time I visited Israel. I only had a handful of students, so Dale DeWitt joined with three people from his church in South Dakota and one student brought a friend and another brought her brother. This was my first time guiding some sites myself, although in Jerusalem I used an Israeli guide. I was still learning about how to design the tour well, and there were some serious bumps on this one.
I was not blogging regularly yet and there was little access to the internet at the time. One of the students put this slideshow together from his own photographs.
The May 2009 Grace Bible College Israel trip (May 12-22) was my third trip and for the first time I was able to “live blog” several times from Israel. Free wireless internet was still a rarity in the hotels at that time, so I only made three posts on the trip. I guided most of the trip myself, with the exception of a single day in in Jerusalem for the Temple Tunnel tour. We skipped Jordan on this tour to save some money for the students and I have always regretted that.
In May 2011 sixteen Grace Bible College students traveled to Israel and Jordan. Unlike other Israel trips, this time we flew Royal Jordanian Airlines to Amman and spent a few days in Jordan before crossing into Israel. This trip was special because my thirteen year old daughter Amy went on the trip along with Ken and Diana Johnson, longtime friends from California. This was Professor Scott Shaw’s first of many trips to Israel with the Grace Bible College group.
This trip was unique because we spent a morning doing an archaeological project at Tamar. We had a nice cool morning (only 90 degrees) and we found nothing but two buckets of pottery fragments (no coins or Dead Sea Scrolls). This was a good experience and more or less cured everyone of any interest in being an archaeologist.
In January 2012 I traveled with 22 adults and students to Israel and Jordan. This trip was a little different than a student trip since we had a wide range of ages (one in high school, two college students, and several older retired adults). I tried to plan the trip with a little less walking (and more frequent bathroom breaks).
