Euphrates Spotlight

2012 Travel Study Trip to the Holy Land

by Duncan Wilder
What an amazing place! We saw it all: from the Mount of Beatitudes overlooking the Sea of Galilee, to the beautiful beaches and Mediterranean Sea in Tel Aviv, to the separation wall and Palestinian refugee camps in Bethlehem, to floating in the Dead Sea (the lowest point on Earth), to the contentious divisions of Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, to the many holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem.

We heard a wide range of perspectives on the conflict from about 30 different speakers on all points of the spectrum.We also took a class interspersed throughout the trip called “Living Beyond Our Stories” (from Educare: The UnLearning Institute) which focused on connecting personal transformation to global transformation. We used models, exercises, and real-life examples from the trip to help us look at our own stories that we’ve carried with us in life, and to show us that there cannot be peace and transformation on a bigger scale if we haven’t found it first within ourselves. …