History, today's conflicts experienced in trip to lands of the Bible By TERRY HOUSHOLDER The minute I opened the travel brochure, I knew this was the trip for us. It had everything I was searching for - visits to the holy sites of Israel, an excursion to an Arab country, and sessions with local religious and civic leaders who could explain the region's complicated political situation. Our two-week trip in November to the lands of the Bible - Israel, the West Bank and Jordan - was arranged by a Minnesota travel agency. My wife, Grace, my mother and aunt and I joined 16 others, all parishioners or friends of the Rev. Rick Rittmaster of Peace Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Minn. It was an incredible experience we will never forget. Pastor Rittmaster's goal was to make the trip more of a pilgrimage than a simple adventure for tourists. We held Bible readings at religious sites in the cities of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Jericho and Jerusalem. We attended Lutheran worship services on a Sunday morning in a historic parish next door to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. And we held simple but meaningful communion services on a boat in the midst of the Sea of Galilee and in the tranquil surroundings of the Garden Tomb overlooking the holy city of Jerusalem. We also visited a site at the River Jordan, where several people in our group commemorated their own baptism in the same river where Jesus was baptized nearly two millenniums ago. The experiences helped bring to life the people and places of the Bible. But we did not just dwell on the past. The pre-arranged visits with Palestinian leaders working to improve the lives of the needy and the oppressed gave us new insights into the struggles the residents of the disputed West Bank are enduring. The most heart-wrenching visit was to a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem where for 50 years thousands of Palestinians forced to leave their homeland have lived in poverty conditions. We'll be writing more about these experiences in a series of stories over the next several days. The timing of the trip was either good or bad, depending on your perspective. As a journalist, I felt it was a perfect time to go. In October, through American diplomacy, the Israelis agreed to turn over more areas of the West Bank to the Palestinians (land taken by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war) in exchange for tougher security guarantees from the Palestinians. The pact set the stage for final talks on the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. But the Wye accord was condemned by right-wing factions of both the Israelis and Arabs. And a deadly bomb blast in a busy Jewish market area of Jerusalem (blamed on a radical Arab group) a week before we left on our trip increased tensions. In addition, the standoff between the U.S. and Iraq over U.N. arms inspections created greater instability. A couple of days into our trip, the U.S.-Iraq crisis grew more intense as it appeared President Clinton was poised to take military action against Iraq. That put the entire nation of Israel on alert, since Israel is America's No. 1 ally in the region. Israel feared retaliation from Iraq and opened 65 gas mask distribution centers around the country. The U.S. State Department put out a notice advising American citizens not to travel to Israel or the region. The British government ordered all its tourists home. Our travel agency offered to provide immediate transportation home, but after a serious discussion, everyone in our group agreed to continue the trip. Thankfully, the political crisis eased as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein agreed to the U.N. demands and the matter was temporarily resolved. Despite a heavy military presence and endless security checkpoints, I never felt in danger the entire two weeks. But I must admit we had one scare in Old Jerusalem that I'll never forget. I was seated with our group next to a row of windows overlooking a courtyard in a lovely restaurant. While eating our lunch we heard a deafening noise that shook the windows and the walls of the building. It certainly sounded like a bomb. Everyone in our group looked stunned. My first reaction was to quickly look at the restaurant staff and the locals to see if they were fleeing or bolting under the tables. No one flinched. The waiters continued to scurry about as if nothing had happened. We went back to eating our kebab. A few minutes later, the same blast-like noise shook the building again. This time I decided we needed an explanation. I walked to the front of the restaurant and asked, ''What was that noise?'' ''We believe it was a sonic boom,'' a polite young woman said at the cash register. ''So it wasn't a bomb,'' I said, relieved. ''We don't believe it was a bomb,'' she said. ''We believe it was a sonic boom. We have them all the time.'' Before finishing our meal, a third blast was heard. But by then, we were acting like the locals. The only thing I said to my wife sitting next to me was, ''You want that last sip of wine?''  Return to Holy Land up Close index   Return to News-Sun & Evening Star Copyright Kendallville Publishing Company