So, Where's the Milk and Honey?

Hey everybody, this time the report comes from Randy! It’s now the evening of June 4th, about 8 in the evening and just about bedtime. An eight o’clock bedtime? Surely I jest! Not when Mary has to get up at 4 in the morning and catch the bus with the dig crew at 5 to be driven to the dig site about 10 minutes down the highway from the kibbutz. The daily temperatures here are so extreme that it gets too hot to work by noon so excavating has to start early when it’s still cool. Today, for example, the temp topped out at about 104 degrees in the shade (plus, the usual view of the sun-baked Jordanian mountains to the east was completely wiped out by a dust storm)! The air is so dry I can feel the moisture being sucked out of my eyeballs as I squint through the slits of my eyelids from behind my inadequate sunglasses. And I’m not doing any digging!
The excavation is going well. There are about 5 different areas that are being worked on with about 4 or 5 team members for each (plus each trenches supervisor), all watched over by directors Jodi Magness and Gwynn Davies. Each morning staff teams erect over trenches the big tents that provide relief from the sun (these have to also be taken down each day). Making sure everyone is drinking enough water is a must! The site is a beehive of hot, dusty activity as the levels of the trenches are taken down centimeter by centimeter with trowel and brush, the dirt being taken by bucketful to the sifter where the residue is scanned over looking for coins, bones and pottery (and any other items that look interesting or promising in order to date that current layer). Yesterday, in Mary’s trench, there was some excitement towards the end of the day as what appeared to be (or what was hoped to be) stone vessel was being revealed. Today, however, disappointment proved to be the case as it turned out to be nothing more than a large rock. The supervisor remains optimistic about the possibilities of the room they’re excavating. Susannah and I have been helping out occasionally with the screening where her quick eyes have picked out some pottery, bones, and coin fragments. And on it goes.
We’ve only been here 4 days and already the extreme harshness of the area have prompted us to look at each other and exclaim with equally extreme irony “So, what were the Israelites complaining about anyway?” In all honesty I can’t readily blame them! I can easily imagine that after being liberated from the brutality of slavery in Egypt and then spending a little time in the blast furnace that is Sinai and the Dead Sea Valley start to wonder if life in Egypt wasn’t that bad after all! Nope, I can’t seem to blame them after all. I’d be wondering, too, “So, where’s all this Milk and Honey I’ve heard about, anyway?”

A memorable moment from a few days ago:
Traveling back to Ginnosar after meeting with Nora Kort (and delivering the “suitcases”) in Jerusalem we were stopped at a checkpoint in the West Bank (which always makes the adrenaline run a little faster and notches up the anxiety up a bit). The soldiers on duty were young women all decked out in full combat gear (again, the heat!). One soldier came up to my rolled down window and asked the usual questions and finished by asking where from the States we were from. “North of Seattle near the Canadian border,” I answered to which she replied, Ahh, I’m from Milwaukee!” Get Out!! No Way! Who would have thought!
So, just within about a week we meet not only a fellow Presbyterian at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv but also an Israeli soldier from Milwaukee! What are the odds?
I've been trying to add photos to the posts but it's hit and miss, mostly miss...I'll keep trying but, well, we'll see...
'Till next time, this is your Indiana Jones Senior Correspondent signing off…