Date: Fri 24-May-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Illustration: C

Location: A-9

Quick Words:

Holy-travel-Wismar-Gollenberg

Full Text:

(conclusion of travel series: Newtown group in Holy Land, 5/24/96)

A Family Returns From The Holy Land

(with photos)

By Shannon Hicks

Editor's Note: Last week was the first of this two-part series, in which the

travels to the Holy Land - sites in Isreal and Jordan where many events in the

Bible occurred (or which formed the basis for other religions) - were recalled

by members of a group from Newtown's Christ the King Lutheran Church who

visited the eastern Mediterranean region last month.

Reverend Gregory Wismar (from Christ the King) led the group of 37, which

included 12 members of his congregation and also included pastors Scott Cady

(St. Peter's Lutheran, Cornwall) and Steve Gordon (Newtown Congregational

Church).

The group left New York's JFK International Airport on April 15, and spent

eight days tracing the steps of Jesus and celebrating Jerusalem's 3,000th

birthday year. Following are some of the highlights from the second half of

the trip.

Tourists travel to the Holy Land throughout the year on their own, with

friends or group tours, or with their family. With thousands flocking into

Jerusalem, Jordan's capital city of Amman, to see the Sea of Galilee, Rev

Wismar says tourism has quickly become the No. 1 industry in both Jordan and

Isreal.

"It's a little bit jarring, to see boaters or skiers on the Sea of Galilee,"

he said recently, recounting the trip he led this year. "It is a little bit

disjunctive, and as summer comes on you'll see more and more people on the

water, but to them, this is their home. It is a premier recreation area.

"On the other hand, with thousands of people visiting from around the world,"

he continued, "you get a sense of this being everybody's city, so there is

some sense of clash there.

"There is not place like it," he expressed.

One of the oldest cities of the Ancient Near East is Bet She'an. The earliest

of the site's twenty superimposed cities date back to the year 5 BC.

Located approximately fifty miles north of Jerusalem, much of Bet She'an was

actually lost until less than a century ago. According to Rev Wismar, a farmer

plowing his field in the 1930s ran into one of the city's columns - the city

had been completely covered over with accumulated dirt for centuries. What the

farmer ran into was the top of one of Bet She'an's tallest columns.

Bet She'an continues, says Rev Wismar, to be "the premier archaeological site

in Isreal now." Excavators have uncovered a bath house, the Odeon (a small

theatre), streets, a Roman temple, a fountain, a pottery workshop, an

amphitheatre, a Crusader fortress and residential quarters believed to have

been used during the Byzantine period.

En route to Jericho, the group saw the Pool of Siloah (in Jerusalem, a site of

one of Jesus' miracles, where it is said he healed a blind man), where the

travelers took part in a healing ceremony.

The group also visited Betlehem, an old city on Mount Judah. Also called "City

of the Nativity," according to Christian tradition this is the birthplace of

Jesus. In Betlehem, members of the group went to the Church of the Nativity.

One of the members of the group, Linda Gollenberg, was traveling with her

husband, her two sons, and her husbands' parents this year. Linda had been to

the Holy City once before, in 1994, with another group led by Rev Wismar.

"In the [Church of] Nativity there is a star they say is over the place where

Jesus was born," she said recently. "So it is tradition to go in and touch the

star. [When we were there,] Someone dropped a photo. I guess people can do

that, but I was surprised to see that. They obviously want prayers for their

family."

On its sixth day in the Holy Land, the group made an excursion to Jordan to

visit one of the wonders of the world. Petra is a city that was carved

entirely into stone, into a mountainside. Getting to Petra, the group was

leaving Jericho. It took four and a half hours to make the journey, and the

majority of the landscape for the ride was desert.

"It got a little boring," Linda admitted, "but you got to catch up on some of

your sleep."

Once in Petra, all eyes were wide open. With up to 5,000 visitors a day, Petra

was one of the highlights of the trip. To get into the city itself, there is

one path - a mile long, much of which is between two skyscraping walls of rock

- tourists must follow.

"You're walking down this narrow path, and all you can see is rock when you

look up. It's just incredible that they carved this by hand," Linda added. The

Treasury, the grand building that greets visitors at the end of the path into

Petra, houses the tomb of a wealth king, says Rev Wismar. (Movie aficionados

will immediately recognize The Treasury as the setting for the closing scenes

of the Harrison Ford film, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade .)

"They don't know which one, but the more money you had, the fancier your tomb

was," Linda said. "So you know this guy must have had a lot!"

Visitors to Holy Land have their own religious beliefs when they visit the

eastern Mediterranean region of the world. Christians, Moslems and Jews all

have their own feelings on what happened in their religion's past.

Although there is a military presence seen, Linda Gollenberg says, the group

she was with never felt threatened. In fact, not only was the land peaceful

during the Newtown group's travels, but the group - which began as a group of

people traveling together - returned home much closer.

"There were twelve people from Christ the King who went," Linda said last

week. She and her husband, Gary, both grew up in Newtown. They continue to

attend Sunday services in Newtown even though they, and their sons, reside in

Southbury.

"It gets to be a close group. Everybody helps everyone... there were a number

of older people on the trip who need help in one way or another. You just get

to know everybody. You sit with different people all the time at dinner.

"It becomes sort of family."