On March 22, we visited Yad Vashem Museum which is located at on the western part of Mount Herzl, just about 20 minutes walk from our Novitiate house at Ein Karem. Yad Vashem Museum is Israel’s museum to remember the victim of the Shoa (Holocaust) and also an educational center for research or documentations to different group coming from the local people and international organizations. Creative and moving Monuments are built around the museum to commemorate about six million Jewish victims, communities, partisans, soldiers and ghetto fighters and their painful experiences during the Shoah. We had with Shlomo Balsam, a Jewish guide, to share with us not only his knowledge about the Shoa(Holocaust) but also about his family who was the victim of the Shoa (Holocaust). Shlomo Balsam introduced to us two parts of the Museum: one is for the educational center which is inside the building and second part as he said, is for the heart, outside of the building which they called “The Hall of Name”. First, Shlomo Balsam toured us outside the …

On 10th March, we went to Bethany. It was a beautiful place, first we went to the Lazarus Catholic Church and each one had a brochure with the gospel John 11, 1-45 in her own language. We prayed and held a moment of silent remembering that Jesus loved to visit the home of Martha and Mary and enjoyed their warm hospitality and attention. They are wonderful women in the Bible and they are of very different temperaments. Martha loved to serve and to be active in her life and Mary was sitting attentively by Jesus’ feet and she was listening to Jesus. Both prayer and work are important in our life, we need to be contemplative in our work and our activities and prayers are doing acts of love, hope and justice. In addition, we went to the Lazarus’ Tomb. It was a beautiful place, we went down stairs and it was a small cave. Sometimes the person needs to die to resurrect and then have life. This happens a lot in our histories of live. Also, we …

Our Outing to En Gedi, the Dead Sea and the Baptism Place at the Jordan River On Sunday 6th of March we had our first visit to these three beautiful places. We went out together with two associates of Sion from Brazil, Luciano and his wife Sema, with Ada who is a friend of Sion from Poland and Victor a brother of Sion and the four of us with Sister Ivone and Sister Juliana. En Gedi, Nature Reserve The first place that we visited was En Gedi which is an Israeli nature reserve. Here we could see the gorgeousness of the landscape, springs, waterfalls, flora and fauna and remnants of the past. There were many students of a women high school and school and also many other tourist who were enjoying the sunny day, just perfect for a walk. So we did that. We climbed through the trails until we arrived to the place called Nahal David (David’s spring). Then we had a rest there and read the passage of the first book of Samuel …

We bless the Lord because this week we had a wonderful opportunity to visit Bethlehem. Thinking that we are near to celebrate the holy week we decided to visit the place where Jesus was born. We are doing a memory of his life and how with it he fulfilled the words of the angel Gabriel when he said to Mary in the gospel of Luke: “…he will be great and will be called Son of the Most High…!” Lk 1,32 Every time that you visit the Nativity church it is amazing to see how people from all around the world are praying in this place. They are full of hope and joy like the shepherds when they went to contemplate the birth of Jesus. We also took our time to appreciate the mystery of God in this significant place where “The Word became flesh” Jn 1,14. We read the gospel and reflected on it. Then we finished this special moment singing together a verse of the “Benedictus”. After visiting the Nativity church we went to …