After Week 1 of Class

So we've been in class for a little over a week now, and already we're starting on reading and writing in Hebrew. I've been surprised how tiring the four hours of classes are, but having to really process everything you hear is pretty taxing on the brain. It's exciting, though, to see the progress we've made in a week. The first week of class focused more on getting used to hearing the language and building vocabulary as we do or handle things in class and refer to them by their Hebrew names. We also had pictures to look at every night that had matching recordings, so that we could continue to build our vocabulary, reinforcing the class, and with minimal English association. We also began to look at the alphabet, again with recordings, and by the end of the week, were reading the words that we had previously heard in our picture lessons. I think learning to read English phonetically has helped make the transition to the phonetics of the Hebrew alphabet, though there are definitely some sounds in Hebrew that don't occur in English.

I've now been to Jerusalem Baptist Church twice, once before I went down to Eilat, and once this past Sunday, and both times the pastor and his family have asked me to eat lunch with them afterwards. The first time I ended up going to a Bible study in Bethlehem with a few Palestinian believers. The Sunday night service is in English, so it's much smaller than their Thursday night study in Arabic. This past time, during the service, my roommate David and I happened to be sitting behind the man who was going to be playing the offertory hymn, and he turned around at one point before the sermon and asked us if we wanted to sing for the offertory. The song was "How Great Thou Art," and we both knew it, so we agreed. Not exactly something I had expected, but it was fun.

Tonight there is a speaker at one of the churches in Jerusalem that I want to go hear, but I need to take a nap and do some studying first, so I'll try to write more soon. And post a couple more pictures, if I have some new ones.