Military Memorial

Last Friday (April 4th) we attended the very impressive Memorial service for Col. Ted Bouck (our son in law's father) at Fort Sam Houston San Antonio, TX.  So privileged to be with family at this time. Full military honors for one who served well.

Fort Sam Houston Cemetery in San Antonio, TX

Family in attendance

Full military honors with horse drawn cassion

Riderless horse

Presenting Art the flag

Col. Theodore L. Bouck

Cemetery Crypts

Bouck and Spellings Grandkids

Cassion 

Israel - Day 10 Final Day

Final day in the Holy Land area and it began as normal here; 5:30 call followed by an early start toward the Israeli-Jordon boarder.  Passports out (2 or 3 times), luggage off loaded from one bus, and we ultimately meet our new bus for the next day in Jordan.
We went straight to Amman (capital) to view the ancient museum and ruins built beginning in Abrahams time until many years after Christ with civilizations (age after age) built on the city site.  Still visible is the old city center known in different eras as Rabbath-Amman, Philadelphia, the Citadel and now modern day Amman. This is the city where David sent his men to war with the children of Ammonites and Amalekites and where David had Uriah sent into the front line of battle so he would be slain, to cover up his (David's) sin with Bathsebeba.
The highlight of the day was the very large city in northern Jordan know as Jerash.  Moses had sent the warriors north to fight  Og of the north before crossing the Jordan River as they conquered the Land of Canaan.  The most complete city ruins in the whole land mostly constructed between 60 BC or 60 AD according to ancient studies, and where Jesus taught in the city center.  Stone street after street have been unearthed since the early 1960's with complete theatres, city gates, churches, and many other huge stone buildings.

Citadel in Amman

Citadel Ampitheatre

City Gate into Jerash

Jerash Hippodrome

Jerash Temple of Zeus

Our group singing in the Jerash Ampitheatre

Temple of Diana

Leaving Jerash in the evening

Amman at night from our hotel window

Busy street in Amman

Israel - Day 9

The most anticipated day of the whole tour has come as we headed south down the Jordan Valley to the lowest place on earth, "The Dead Sea", quoted to be 1300 feet below sea level.  (Due to its water level descending it is from 100 to 150 feet lower than that advertised level).  As we drove along the western shoreline (in the West Bank) we continued south almost to the southern end of the Sea to "Masada".  At points there were mammoth boulders along the road having tumbled off the rock/sand mountains.  Very little vegetation just sand and trillions of rocks.  We saw where the Kidron Valley (in Jerusalem) passes through these mountains as it runs to the Dead Sea.  The plateau in the mountain range known as Masada rises from the road level approximately 1300 feet with shear cliff sides to make it nearly impossible to climb. This was the place of the Israeli's last stand as the Romans put down the Israeli rebellion and into Jerusalem in 70 AD when the Jewish temple was destroyed by Emperor Titus.  Masada and its thousand plus inhabitants lasted 3 more years before the final siege of Masada.  Then back north again to En Gedi and a hike up the flowing water pass to four levels of waterfalls.  This was a favorite spot of King David when he was pursued by King Saul, and a piece of sleeping Saul's garment was taken off by David in a cave here.  What a refreshing flow of water this is in a parched, dry wilderness.

    Then north again to Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947.  These were hidden by the Essenes and are considered the oldest, most perfect validation of the accuracy of our scripture when compared to our current scripture developed through the ages.  These fantastic people knew their fate, and hid their most precious possession (scrolls of God's Word in clay pots hermetically sealed with bees wax) in the caves in the mountain range near the Dead Sea.

 We finished our day with a stop at a popular beach on the Dead Sea with many wading or floating in this salt buoyant sea. 

Cave where great number of jars of scrolls were found 

Masada temple ruins

Masada on top of the mountain

Aerial view of Masada 

Lockers and swimming pool on Masad

Hiking up to waterfalls in En-Gedi

Floating in the Dead Sea