Joe Bryant and the Travels in the Promised Land

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the story behind this trip, let me fill you in on how this came about. Sometime in the fall of 2006 I heard a Biblical scholar named Ray Vander Laan (RVL) doing a seminar in West Point Georgia and was blown away by a combination of his knowledge of the scriptures and my lack thereof. That seminar left me with a desire to know my God better, and as part of that, to know the Bible much better than I do, to be able to read the scriptures in their original languages, and to see the land and the culture in which these stories took place. So after the seminar was over, RVL recommended a place that I could learn Hebrew. There was just this one problem: where he recommended was in Israel, and while I wanted to go there, I didn't see it happening anytime soon. But the thought wouldn't leave me alone, and then I remembered a scholarship that the college of engineering at Auburn has. This scholarship, called the Birdsong Scholarship, is for engineering students to study in other countries, as long as they study something besides engineering. So to shorten the story a bit, I applied for the scholarship and, by the grace of God, I am one of three recipients of the scholarship for this year. What's more, during the first two weeks of my time in Israel I will be accompanying a 2 week in depth Bible study tour with That the World May Know ministries, which RVL founded with Focus on the Family. I am really looking forward to this tour as we will be traveling around Israel, seeing locations where Biblical stories actually took place, and looking at how those stories apply to us as we strive to live out this Christian life. Praise God for this incredible opportunity!