God bless you abundantly through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I can hardly believe it! It's already May 21st and I'm just now getting ready to write the June Newsletter. Usually by now we are ready to send it to the printers.

Recently we returned from the Bible Lands trip, WOW what an incredible time of fellowship, learning, and rejoicing as we walked in the steps of Jesus Christ and saw many of the same things he saw as he lived and ministered in his homeland areas.

There were 16 of us and another couple from Arizona joined our tour group to make it a group of 18. Because of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians plus the continuous news media coverage that goes on daily tourism has greatly fallen off. There is definitely unrest in the area, but it is very targeted and tour buses are not on the list of targets. Both sides are hurting because tourism fills the pockets of both the Jews and the Palestinians. Instead of 30 buses per day touring the area, there are only 1-3 buses per day. That means a lot of dollars are not reaching their pockets. Never did we ever feel endangered during our travel throughout Israel and the Palestinian controlled areas. We were able to see everything we wanted to see on our tour. All 18 of us agreed that EVERY Christian believer should make a trip to the Bible lands at least once and experience the sights and the land of Jesus Christ and prophets of old.

We spent 4 nights in Jerusalem and 3 nights in Tiberias and went to the familiar places we have read about for years in the gospels and other records of the Bible. We visited "old Jerusalem", a spectacular model city of Jerusalem (which displayed how the city and temple area looked in Jesus day), Bethlehem, Bethany, the Mt. of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, the Kedron Valley, Cana, Nazareth, Tiberias, Sea of Galilee, the location of the Sermon on the Mount, Caesarea, Mt. Carmel, the Valley of Armegaddon, the Dead Sea, Qunran (the site of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls), and Masada, plus ruins of other cities such as Bet She'an, and Megiddo.

We had our Sunday Fellowship at the Jordan River and did Holy Communion at the Garden of the Tomb. We went to tile Pool of Bethesda, Herod's Antonia Fortress, the Upper Room, the House of Caiaphas, Jericho, Capernaum, the Tabgha fishes and the loaves feeding in Luke 9:10-17, the place of Peter's calling to serve, "feed my sheep", and many other places of Biblical interest.

Jon Nessle did spot teachings almost everywhere we went and I taught a couple of times myself. These teaching times were priceless because they gave us history and background in the scriptures of the areas we visited. We are already thinking about future trips and how we could make changes that would make our time in Israel even more profitable to believers that would choose to come. Our next trip could possibly be in 2003, we'll see. Most of us that will read this letter have had the doctrine of God's Word taught to us for years, we've read it and even shared it with others, but to be able to see and walk in the places we only had read about will increase our appreciation and love of our Lord Jesus Christ and for the truth of God's Word. The pictures of your mind concerning the Word will become very clear and very real. Acts 4:20 "For we cannot but speak the things that we have SEEN and heard," now has more meaning.

Loving always, In Christ.

John