Tel Aviv Market

   

Tel Aviv was so beautiful!  Today was simply a day of fun.  We did get to stop by some Biblical, historical, and recreational stops.  Our first stop was at Jaffa.

Jaffa was also known as Joppa where Jonah sailed out of to flee from the Lord, and also where Peter had a vision of the unclean animals in the sheet in Acts 10.  It was after this event that the Gospel began to spread to the Gentiles!  When Peter shared the Gospel with Cornelius, he later went to the brothers in Jerusalem and explained to them what had happened.  God had given the Gentiles the same gift (the Holy Spirit) as the Jews.  That's me!  I am a Gentile!  But the Lord has graciously extended his "repentance that leads to life" to me as well! (Acts 11:18)

We walked to the harbor from the church and saw the big blue Mediterranean sea! It was beautiful!  We wandered around, took pictures of street art and then walked over next door to Tel Aviv, a city, literally built on sand!  There we went to the location where Israel declared their independence on May 14, 1948.  The declaration only lasted a total of 32 minutes as it started at 4pm on a Friday.  They had to make the ceremony short so they could still hold the Sabbath. It was very interesting hearing about the history of the declaration.  Apparently 350 people were invited secretly the day before. They all crammed into a little art museum in Tel Aviv.  Ben Gurion was the first to sign the declaration (later in the semester we will go to his house in the desert!)

After this historical location we then found our way to the art fair in Tel Aviv.  There were venders everywhere selling their special creations.  Some made mini flowers, cut out pictures, puppets, hand sewn kids toys, leather pieces, jewelry of all sorts, one girl even sold necklaces and bracelets with names written on rice!  So neat!  We then hung out at the beach, played in the water and tried to make sand castles.  I loved walking along and actually finding whole sea shells!

Our lunch was the best I had yet. Next to the fair was a street market where we found fruit smoothie stands and this amazing kiosk restaurant area- it was so good!  YUM!