Waking up this morning to birds. No crowing roosters. No barking dogs. No call to prayer. Just birds and quietness. Lovely.

First off is corrections. I told you not to trust any of my information! I’m having trouble with internet connection here and I couldn’t get to check my “facts”! So, it’s 1,000 gallons per minute at the Jericho springs yesterday. Not 10,000 gallons. Both of them are just big numbers! I have difficulty visualising both of them!

And I must tell you our two “small world” stories. When we went down to Beersheba the other week, I signed my name in the war cemetery book at the gate. Turning the page back to the day before I saw a name and address I knew! One of James’s best friend’s father-in-law and he also used to go to Lakeside back in the day.

Then the other day, I was chatting to a young girl on our tour who’s from Switzerland. Turns out that she spent a year in Melbourne and went to a Bible college there where she was in some of the same classes as Philip’s niece. She still keeps in touch with her.

After our breakfast this morning, we walked from our little bungalows on the shore of Lake Galilee down to the water’s edge where we boarded a boat for a ride on Lake Galilee to nearby Capernaum. Not quite a “Jesus-boat”. It had a motor, not sails and oars.

No storms or high winds. Beautifully calm, and the water a peaceful blue-green. Half-way there they stopped the motor. And in the quietness, Paul our tour guide read the narrative stories of Jesus on the lake. And then in the quietness we sat and reflected on it. Jesus did most of his ministry time in this region.

One of the boatmen also demonstrated how fishermen throw their nets. They still do it the same way. But with plastic nets now. And they don’t do it on Galilee because it’s all fished out. They are restocking it.

Lake Galilee is also shrinking. So much water is pulled out for agriculture that it’s having a drastic effect. I’ve noticed that there are lots of plantations everywhere on the hills of bananas and mangoes which have high-water requirements. Don’t know why they don’t grow more suitable plants.

Then the boat pulled into Capernaum, a centre for a lot of Jesus’s ministry. Lots of archaeological ruins of the village, some of them preserved for the tourists.

There’s the ruins of what they call Peter’s house. One of Jesus’s disciples. Turns out that there’s good evidence for it actually being Peter’s house. Some first century graffiti on one of the walls.

And in the ruins of the synagogue they’ve dug down to find the foundation walls of the synagogue that was there in the time of Jesus. And he taught in that synagogue. As we walked around the ruins, we saw a lady devoutly praying against one of the walls. And then scratching something on the old ruined walls. I was scandalised! If everyone did that on the walls, you wouldn’t be able to see the old original walls. I thought it was very thoughtless.

It’s the black row of stones at the bottom that are from the synagogue of Jesus’s time.

Then back on the bus and further back up into the hills to Chorazin, another village that we have a record of Jesus teaching in. These ruins are made of black basalt stone blocks, using the local stone. It’s of volcanic origin.

An olive oil press at Chorizin

We walked half way down a steep hillside and sat under a shady tree and looked out over Lake Galilee down below us. Pretty wildflowers and thorns and dried out grasses around us. Paul, our tour guide read out the teachings of Jesus’s teachings, the Beatitudes. Challenging and controversial then. And still just as challenging and controversial to us today.

We walked right down the hill to the shores of Lake Galilee where we again sat down on the stony beach while Paul read the narrative story of the reinstatement of Peter as a follower of Jesus and leader of his church. I picked up a few small pebbles from the beach.

Then off in the bus again to the archaeological digs of the village of Bethsaida. It’s still an active dig, but they weren’t there today. It’s not easy to get into it, but our bus driver had some pull with the guards at the gate.  Bethsaida used to be on the shores of Lake Galilee. But there’s been earthquakes and formerly-navigable marshes have been drained and now it is much further away. It’s the original home of Peter and Andrew, before they moved their livelihood to Capernaum. They’ve found a fisherman’s house in the Bethsaida ruins too. Because there’s lots of fishing implements in the house.

But before it was called Bethsaida, it used to be Gershun. Centuries before. Where there are stories of King David and his son Absalom in the Old Testament here. It’s not as organised or “touristy” as a dig.

We crossed the mighty Jordan River. Actually, it’s not mighty any more. Blink and you miss it, now. We stopped by the side of a hill in the region of the Gadarenes where Paul read the narrative story of the man possessed by many demons being healed by Jesus and the pigs rushing off into the sea to their death. A strange and puzzling story. This area is in the Golan Heights. Another controversial area for Israel and this region.

Then we headed back to our accommodation that’s run by a kibbutz. And the biggest buffet meal I’ve ever seen for our dinner! I should have two more stomachs just to fit in small samples of everything. There’s so many Americans staying here. The Americans aren’t in Jerusalem, they’re here in Galilee!

And I’ll finish off with a photo of wattle. Growing everywhere in the hills. They were a pale yellow colour, rather than gold. I wish I could send send you the wonderful scent too. There’s nothing like the scent of wattle!