Archeaology and Concerts

Another long day has passed. This morning we headed out bright and early on a half-day field trip. We split up into four groups instead of our usual two groups. (Left - behind me you can see part of the destruction left by the Romans. Before, the entire sidewalk was covered as well, but that cleared that debris. If you look on the wall, you see signs of later levels of occupation. The first dark line, actually a water channel, was street level during the 4th and 5th centuries. The second dark line is from the Ottomon Period, which began after the 16th century. That was street level at that time). I was with the first half of the alphabet in Brother Draper's class, with Brother Draper. We were supposed to go to the Wohl Museum first, but when we arrived, we discovered that it wasn't open for another hour and fifteen minutes. So, not sure what we should do, we went to see the broad wall. The broad wall is a portion of Hezekiah's wall that he had built to stop the Assyrians from destroying Jerusalem. It was huge and worked, the Assyrians did not destroy Jerusalem. Then we went to the cardo. The cardo is a level of Roman street from the Byzantine era (4-6 century). (Right - perhaps you recognize this place? This is me on the stairs south of the temple mount. These are the stairs where the Savior would have walked. If you have the new LDS-printed Bibles with the pictures at the back, look back there and you will see a similar picture). At the cardo, we still had fifty minutes before we could go to the museum. Brother Draper gave an impromptu lesson on Revelations. It was really interesting.
Finally we were able to go to the museum. Inside the museum, we saw a few houses from the second temple period (first century). We even saw a mansion of a high priest. It was really interesting because we saw the burn marks from when Titus and his army burned the city. Next we went to an archaeological park. It is a park south that is located in the south west corner of the temple mount. We walked on the street level from Jesus' day and walked on steps that he would have walked on to enter the temple. It was really great. There are few places here that we can actually say, Jesus walked there. It was nice to be at one of them. We also saw the dramatic destruction created by the Romans.
While there, we ran into a group of Evangelists that we ran into in Tel Aviv. It was interesting to see them in normal clothes. They invited us to a concert tonight, but we had a concert of our own, so we couldn't go. After that, I walked through the old city before coming back to the center.
Tonight, we had a concert at St. George's Cathedral. It was great to be able to sing there. The audience was great, and sang our last two songs with us plus a repeat of one of our songs. It was amazing. Now I am tired and ready to go to sleep. After all, it has been a long day.