Journey to Bethlehem (J2B)

So last Saturday night, we decided to check out the church down the street and their holiday event called Journey to Bethlehem. Here we are waiting in line. Because we didn't have reservations our wait would have been 3 hours. Good thing Mom told the right person "her life story-with tears" and the wait was cut to 1 hour! Way to go Mom!

Abbie and Jess help "babysit" Chumba

When our group was called, we followed our "family leader" who left King Herrods court to take us to Bethlehem. Here's Herrod with his Roman guards which were quite menacing throughout our tour. Poor Jay was really afraid of them.

After reading ancient scrolls at our first stop and meeting the wise men at another we made our way toward Bethlehem.

Here is a real camel! (behind the kids). Danette told the little kids not to get to close to the camel or it would spit on them. As a group the kids all took one giant step back away from it. There were tons of doves, sheep, goats and donkey's too which made it so realistic.

Finally we made it past more menacing Roman guards into Bethlehem. We found the Inn and our family leader asked about Mary saying "how could you turn that poor woman out into the street"! The Innkeeper said "I didn't...she was already in the street". A little biblical humor.

Here we are looking at all the bread being baked in real fire ovens (with samples), gold coins handed out to the kids, street vendors calling to us and to much more to mention.

Here are some ancient "partiers" with their tamborines and dancing

Uh-oh! Our taxes are due! We've gotta pay or else! Our family leader did it for us...whew!

Once back outside the city we find some sheperds and look what "appeared" to us! 3 Angels tell us how we can find baby Jesus!

Finally, we found the star which we followed and look who we found! Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. There was a guitarist there and we got to join him in singing "Oh Come Let Us Adore Him" to baby Jesus together. It was the perfect ending to our 45-minute excursion. We will DEFINATELY be doing this again each year!