12 Days Across Israel and Jordan: From Mount Nebo and Petra to the Empty Tomb

We are waiting for you as you land, and we bring you to your hotel to rest. There is nothing to do tonight but arrive, and let it settle in that tomorrow you begin walking the land you have read about all your life.

Your first morning opens on the Mount of Olives, with the whole Old City spread golden below you. You walk down the hillside to the Garden of Gethsemane and stand among olive trees old enough to have been here, where he prayed on the night he was betrayed. People go quiet here. Let them.

The afternoon leaves room to take in the city slowly, letting the reality of where you are settle before the fuller days ahead.

"He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed." (Luke 22:41)

This morning you walk the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross, through the living streets of the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over both the cross and the tomb. You also come to the Western Wall, where prayers are pressed into ancient stone.

In the afternoon, the quiet green of the Garden Tomb gives your group space to gather and take communion together. This is the day the resurrection stops being a doctrine you affirm and becomes a place you have stood.

"He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." (Matthew 28:6)

A short drive this morning brings you to Bethlehem and the Basilica of the Nativity. You bow low through the Door of Humility and kneel at the holy cave honored without a break since the earliest centuries of the Church as the place where Christ was born. It is smaller and plainer than you imagine. That is the point. Nearby lie the Shepherds' Fields, where the angels first brought the news.

The afternoon allows time to reflect, and to take in a town whose name you have sung your whole life.

"She gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger." (Luke 2:7)

This morning you descend to the Jordan River at Qasr al-Yahud, the traditional place of the baptism of Jesus on the western bank, across from Bethany beyond the Jordan, where many in the group choose to renew their baptismal vows in the water itself. Then to the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, where you float without effort. After time to rest by the water, the day winds down in the quiet of the desert.

"As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened." (Matthew 3:16)

This morning you travel north to the Sea of Galilee and sail across the still water by boat, often with the engine cut so you can drift in the quiet. You visit Capernaum, where the ministry was based, and climb the gentle Mount of Beatitudes where the Sermon on the Mount was preached.

Lunch by the shore is the traditional St. Peter's fish. On the water, with the hills all around, the Gospels stop being ancient. He was here, and now so are you.

"Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people." (Matthew 4:19)

This morning you visit Nazareth, where the hidden years unfolded, and the Basilica of the Annunciation, built over the holy grotto where the angel Gabriel brought the good news to the Virgin Mary. There is time to sit quietly with what began here, in an ordinary town.

After lunch you begin the drive back toward Jerusalem, ready to cross into Jordan and the second half of the journey.

"He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up." (Luke 4:16)

This morning you cross the border into Jordan and climb Mount Nebo, where Moses stood at the very end of his life and looked out over the Promised Land he was not permitted to enter. On a clear day you can see across to Jericho and the hills of Jerusalem. It is one of the most moving viewpoints in the whole biblical world.

Standing where Moses stood, looking at what he longed for and never reached, you understand something about faith and patience that no sermon ever quite delivered. Nearby, the town of Madaba holds its ancient mosaic map of the Holy Land.

"There the Lord showed him the whole land. Then the Lord said to him, This is the land I promised." (Deuteronomy 34:1 to 4)

Today belongs to Petra, one of the wonders of the world. You walk through the Siq, a narrow canyon over a kilometer long, the rock walls rising high on either side, and at its end the Treasury appears out of the stone, carved by the Nabateans two thousand years ago, exactly as it has appeared to travelers for centuries.

There is time to explore deeper into this vast rose-red city. This is a place of pure awe, and a day your group will never stop talking about.

"The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer." (Psalm 18:2)

You travel through the vast desert landscapes that shaped the wilderness wanderings, before returning toward Israel. The scale of the desert changes how you read the forty years. What looked like a punishment on the page becomes a landscape you have seen with your own eyes, immense and silent and beautiful.

Back in Jerusalem, a final unhurried day to return to a site that moved you, to pray at the Western Wall, or simply to sit with everything you have seen across two countries and eleven days. Some use the morning to shop for gifts in the old markets, others to return quietly to the empty tomb.

"I rejoiced with those who said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord." (Psalm 122:1)

We take you to the airport. You have seen the whole sweep now, both banks of the Jordan, both testaments made real. Few journeys change a person as completely as this one.