Two days of Humility

I haven't written for a couple of days, so I will sum up two pretty amazing days in one post. On Monday, after classes were finished, we were able to use the oil presses on the grounds of the school to press the olives we have been harvesting. Before we went out to press the olives, we gathered in the forum to have a devotional on the significance of olive trees, olives, and the olive pressing process. My Ancient Near Eastern Studies professor, Andrew Skinner, gave the devotional. I know some of you may know who Andrew Skinner is but for those of you who don't, I will tell you a little about him. In short, he is a historical Genious. Ask him anything and I can guarantee he knows it. He has written numerous religious books, has been on the correlation commitee for the church, and well, I really could go on and on. The point is he knows his stuff and gets his point across eloquently. I feel so lucky to be in such close proximity with men as great as him, and love even more that he is so down to earth. During his devotional, he taught us about the importance of the olive tree in biblical civilizations and how they used it. He then taught us the symbolism in the many parts of the olive tree and the crushing process to get oil from the olives. He spoke about it with great respect and in a very sacred way. He promised that we would never look at an olive tree the same, and I hope I will always see the great symbol it is. We then were able go outside and use the three different pressed the center has to crush the olives and harvest the oil. It really was a once in a life time experience to take part in.

Today we took a field trip to the Holocaust Museum. I have been so excited to go. I remember being facinated by the Holocaust and WWII when I was younger and reading any book about it that I could get my hands on. I listened to the tape Dad gave me of the Diary of Anne Frank when I would go to bed at night. I also remember renting a documentary on the Holocasut once, not knowing how graphic it would be. I remember turning it on in Mom and Dad's room, and sitting on the floor in front of the TV, excited to see real footage of the liberations of the concentration camps. It wasn't long before I turned to movie off in tears because the skeletons limping across the screen did not resemble any of the people I had imagined as I read and reread the books from the Holocaust. As many of us students talked about the field trip coming up, my excitement grew to become reaquanted with something that had stolen my attention for so many years.

When we arrived at the museum this morning it was raining. The first rain we have seen since coming here. The rain seemed to fit with the events of the day. Upon entering the museum, you can tell every last detail was well thought out and everything was placed in a certain spot or hung a particular was for a reason. The first diplay is of pictures found on many of the Jews who died right before their camps were liberated. The pictures they held were of their families or people they loved before the nightmare of the Holocaust began. As you walk through the museum, it is set up into periods of the Holocaust, starting with the book burnings, and weaving it's way through the ghettos, to the work camps, all the way to the liberation. Artifacts were displayed with care, videos showed actual footage, photos and drawing helped to illistrate what happened, and more information than I could possibly take in on one visit was available. It took us three hours to walk through relatively quickly. It was amazing how quiet and attentive our group was the whole time. While much of what was presented was startling and hard to swallow, it was also very humbling. As we were walking out of the main part of the museum, one of my friends asked what the right word would be to describe what we had just seen. How do you describe something like what I had just seen. Words kept running through my head as we visited the Memorial and the Room of Names that holds all the names they have been able to find of Holocaust victims. The one word I have finally settled on is Sobering. Our last stop in the museum was the children's memorial. It was a memorial made to pay tribute to all of the children who died in the Holocaust. The family who sponsored it had a two year old son that died in the Holocaust. As you walk into the memorial, a sculture of his face is imprinted into the wall. I had been pretty proud of myself for keeping it together throughout the whole museum. Even when our tour guide told us that the first people the Nazis tried to eleminat were those with mental and physical disabilities (they managed to kill 70,000 before the Catholic Church stepped in stopped them) I kept my composure. As soon as I walked into the children's memorial and saw the sculture of the little two year old boy I lost it. His chubby, round cheeks and sly little grin reminded me all to much of my little Asher boy. I tryed to fight the tears, but the whole experience had been pretty emotionally tolling. I hate crying in front of people. I can count on one hand the times I have shown what a bawl baby I am in front of people. Inside the memorial, the names and ages of children are said over a sound system, and mirrors and windows with little lights that look like candles cover the walls. As I walked out of the memorial, I managed to regain my composure and I don't think many people noticed my puffy red eyes. As we walked out of the museum, the sun was shining. My religion teacher came up to me and said, "Did you notice the weather? It was raining when we got here, but now the sun had come out." He must have known I was struggling a bit because then he said, "It just goes to prove there is always hope." It really was a sobering experience, and even though I am still feeling a little drained from the whole experience, I would love to go back again because I feel like I only scratched the surface of all that there was to see. I am grateful for the Olive Crushing experience I had just a few days prior to help me understand and remember times in my own life where I have been able to use the Atonement. Christ really did suffer. He knows all of our aches and pains. He loves all of us individually. It is that knowledge that gives me hope on the rainy days.