Visiting the Bedouins

We left the lush grounds of the biblical nature reserve this afternoon and and headed for the Negev Desert this evening.

And what's in the desert? A bedouin camp!

This gentlemen educated us on the ways of the bedouins, sharing about their traditions and lifestyle, including a demonstration of coffee grinding!

We were then taken into another tent and served a meal, bedouin style.

After a long day of travel, a traditional meal of falafel, rice, pita, hummus and salad never tasted so good as we ate around the tables family style.

We then gathered in one of the tents for Tyler's first full teaching time of this trip.

I have four pages of tiny writing in my journal, an attempt to capture every bit of the depth of this talk about how to read the book of Genesis - something that Tyler is knowledgable and passionate about. I was in tears at the end as he finished talking about God, Elohim, our Sovereign King...who is also God, Yahweh, the one who is personal, who fashioned us, who gets his hands dirty as he breathed and continues to breathe life into us. What a beautiful end to our first day of teaching about our roots in the Old Testament.

Oh, but the day didn't end there!

It ended here.

In a tent made of goat hair, where we were to pick a sleeping bag from a pile and lay down on a thin mattress for our first night's sleep (women on one side with a partition between the men on the other side!) we found our places for a night, hopefully, of sleep.

Words can't begin to describe this experience! You've never become close with a group until you've slept beside them for a night in a bedouin's tent!