Introduction. Now well into our late 80s, we realized that we should not be undertaking any more strenuous trips. Long flights, especially overnight, were just too much strain. And Jane’s ability to walk more than a couple miles, especially uphill or on rough terrain, has diminished greatly in recent years. So it was somewhat of a surprise when she declared that a visit to the Holy land was number one on her bucket list.

Darrell searched for a manageable way to do it, including one-day layovers in Europe en route, getting there by sea rather than air, hiring a private guide,and various combinations of those. He even lucked out when space on a cruise-tour from Athens to the Middle East suddenly became available due to a late cancellation. But the cruise would only give us a couple of days in the Holy Land, not much for the time and effort involved.

Then our son, Joseph, very active in the Christian community, mentioned that he knew of a pastor (Rev. Jerry Keller) in Indiana who was conducting a tour to the Holy Land in September. We followed up and, after assurances that his tour would do everything necessary to accommodate us, we booked the trip with his outfit, Tabernacle Tours. Pastor Keller was true to his word. He and his group provided us personal attention and assistance far beyond what any commercial tour or guide ever could.

It also turned out that this tour was flying from Indianapolis to Washington Dulles, then onward nonstop to Tel Aviv, so we could conveniently join them at Dulles. That still left us with the problem of the 11 hour overnight flight, but we solved that buying business class tickets, something we rarely do.

Sunday, September 8. Since we would have access to the business class lounge, we planned to get to Dulles Airport well before our 10:30 p.m. flight. We left our home in Massanutten around 4:00 p.m. and got to Joseph’s an hour later. As Joseph was driving us up to Dulles, he announced a pleasant surprise: we were going to an Olive Garden on the way to have dinner with his daughter Caren, her partner and his two girls. We spent about an hour at the restaurant, leaving for the airport at 7:15.

We relaxed in United’s Polaris lounge until 8:45, thinking that with business class we would have priority boarding with no line. Wrong! There was a mob at the gate, not a line. Due to strict Israeli security, there was no priority for anyone. When we finally did get on board, we found that our seats, though side-by-side, were on different aisles with a high partition between them. We could not see each other and could not talk. The plane took off at 11:00 p.m. A nice dinner was served at midnight. In spite of it all, we were able to sleep fairly well for about six hours.