Even breakfast was exciting

Location: On the bus, ready to go

We got up and after dinner the night before (which blew my mind), my expectations for breakfast were a little higher than they probably should have been. But it too was amazing. There were breads and cheeses, croissants, lots of fish, vegetables, fruit, cereal, eggs, and of course lots of stuff I didn’t recognize.

Jace and I tried to get a green bus table together in order to meet some of the folks who would be riding on our bus (there were 5 buses, all color-coordinated), but that didn’t work. Nobody had been on that bus together yet, so there was no bonding to create the table.

Instead, a family from the red bus joined us – parents, son, and daughter. I was thinking, “Wow, that’s expensive, but how cool to do this trip as a family!”. The son (16) Ross wants to be a UN translator someday. He says his first 2 languages he wants to learn are Farsee (an Arabic language) and Korean. He was an impressive kid I expect I’ll be reading about someday. The daughter (15) was so obviously a second child, and lived in the shadow of the first. She didn’t know what she wanted, was quiet and shy in her (almost) responses to my questions. Her dad even teased her about wanting to go to the mall when I asked what she was looking forward to the most on the trip. I felt sorry for her and wanted to help her, but of course no way to do that. Instead, much later, when Linday McCaul (our worship leader) showed up, I asked her if she’d make an effort to interact with / invest in this young girl. Lindsay is a 26 year old single woman who is absolutely amazing in her heart for God, so I figured it would be a good thing for her to have this young woman on her radar.

Knowing that our next hotel was in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, and that we wouldn’t be returning to the Tel Aviv airport until our departure, we were up at 6, bags in the hall and breakfast at 7, and on the bus ready to head north by 8.