Saturday, May 5, 2018 ~ Carol Van Loo

With morning has come the breeze and the Muslim call to Prayer. We are in the village of Zababdeh, in the northern part of the West Bank in Palestine and what would have been Samaria during the first century.

We have spent the night in Abuna Firas’s new guest house. As we walk down the hill toward the Parish, we pass olive and citrus trees and a large field of tobacco plants, and we breathe in the fragrance of the flowers and the earth. Abuna’s wife, Doris, has prepared for us a delicious breakfast of omelets and Palestinian pizza (pita with za’atar and olive oil toasted into the bread), along with the strong coffee made sweet with cardamom.

After breakfast Abuna Firas guides us on a walk through the village, past the Catholic High School, and we can see the 15,000-student Arab American University in the distance. We are then taken to an Inn that was built during the time of the Roman Occupation. This Inn is built up with the stables for the animals below. This is most certainly similar to the Inn where our Savior was born and my heart is filled with the Nativity. I am so blessed and privileged to have this experience.

An inn, a bit restored, but from the first century. Humans stayed above, animals below.