Halloween

No trick-or-treating this year, but the kids put on a great party for some friends, and the BYU students put on a great party for the branch.

Olive Harvest

Like last time we were here, we joined in the olive harvest at the Augusta Victoria hospital. They have about 800 trees and press the harvest every year into oil to use in feeding their patients as well as selling to fund their programs. We were with the cub scouts and girl scouts.

Claire in the tree:

Sylvie and I going for the easy pickin'.

New Friends, Old Friends

A lot of people come through Jerusalem. And even many of us who "stay" are here short-term. We are having fun meeting new friends and running into friends from days past. Here are a few of the people we've met at church.

Emma, who happened to be interning in the hostel next to our apartment. She instantly became the kids' favorite babysitter.

The Spendloves, who happen to know many of our friends from the time they lived in Shanghai.

The Mackleys, our bishop from Bangkok, who happened to be here touring.

Claire's small but awesome Young Women group: a Laurel, a BYU student advisor, and the YW president (there's actually another counselor, too, and some more advisors, I think--Claire says it is overkill😊).

Spontaneous Camping

When our van finally arrived, we were so excited, we decided to go camping. We have a national park pass, so we picked one with camping spots on the beach near Tel Aviv, packed the van and left. Because of our unique weekend situation here, we arrived on a Saturday evening, as most others were leaving. We thought camping on sand would be soft, but it's not (of course, the kids didn't mind). The next day, we played all day at the beach and even met a German family from our school we hadn't met yet.