Began the day with a trip to Capernaum - this was great!  For one, this is the city that Jesus lived in when he stayed at Simon Peter's house.  Secondly, the remains of the temple that he would have attended and preached at are still here.  Thirdly, Peter's house foundation remains here.  (The history of that being Peter's house is recorded back as early as 300 a.d. so it is not hard to imagine 300 years of oral tradition keeping that spot intact!)   How cool is that?!  

The tour left from there to spend the day at the Kibbutz, but we really felt that we needed to go to the Church of the Beatitudes, the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes as well as the church of the Primacy of St. Peter.  

The church on the Mount of Beatitudes - very lovely, but we spent our time in the field!  There was a priest there with a group who was reading the Sermon on the Mount so it was a really nice experience.  

From there, we made the long journey (I think it was 3 minutes!) to the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and the Fishes (I guess you know what happened there!)  The funny thing is, when you are reading the Bible, it seems like we put the geographic area in the perspective of the size of the United States.  But this is a very small country!  (When the army runs military exercises from east to west it only takes the helicopters 6 minutes to go from border to border!)  So it was really incredible for us to see the close proximity of Tiberias to Capernaum; of the Sermon on the Mount to the Miracle of the Feeding of the 5,000.  

Here it is - the church itself is unremarkable - built on the remains of a 5th century Byzantine Basilica, it marks the exact spot (that's part of the original land - more can be seen on the side) of the miracle.  

Here I am at the Church of the Primacy of Peter.  This is the spot, on the sea of Galilee, that the resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples (who had returned to their homes after the events in Jerusalem) and were back fishing.  The Sea of Galilee is being drained by the country of Israel (it is their main water source for drinking/living).  You can see the original water line was much closer to the church - on the other side of the road.  This church was built on the remains of a 4th century church, which was built on the remains of a 1st century site that everyone knew was where the resurrected Jesus had appeared.  Here is Paul standing on the Sea of Galilee where the men would have come in and Jesus would have shared a fish dinner with them.  It is also where Jesus asked Peter 3 times, "Do you love me" and then told him to "feed his sheep" - this was a pivotal point for the beginning of Simon Peter's evangelizing.

We ended this long day by meeting up with the tour group, having lunch at the Kibbutz and then heading out to Beth Shean - the best preserved Roman-Byzantine town in Israel.  First inhabited over 5,000 years ago, it was occupied at one time by the Egyptians, another by the Philistines, then by Alexander the Great and then back by the Romans in the 1st century bc and then by the Byzantine Christians before collapsing during the earthquake in 749 ad.  That ended another very full day!