If Dennie and Loretta Lynch had one word to describe their 10-day tour of the Holy Land last month, the Joplin couple would likely go with “awesome.”
“There were so many things to see and so many places to go and even though we knew there were a lot of things for tourists, we really didn’t feel it was a tourist trap,” said Loretta Lynch, who visited the sacred sites with her husband, Dennie; the Rev. Phillip McClendon, pastor of Calvary Baptist; and other area residents. “I used to think what in the world did our grandkids mean when they said ‘awesome’ but since we came back and people have been asking about the trip, I have caught myself so many times saying it was awesome. It was marvelous.”
Another factor, besides seeing the sights, had to do with the spiritual experience.
“Just like us, everybody who had gone to the Holy Land said when they got back that they were actually drawn closer to Christ,” Loretta Lynch said. “The Garden of Gethsemane (a peaceful garden among a grove of ancient olive trees, looking back at the eastern wall of the City of Jerusalem) was so incredibly beautiful. When I read about it, I never thought it would be like it was. Somebody said, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful as we were sitting looking out over the garden if Jesus would come walking through the gate?’”
Her husband agreed that the whole trip was an uplifting spiritual experience.
“You have to be emotional if you are a Christian and standing in the tomb of Jesus,” he said.
It was difficult for the couple to pinpoint a highlight, but both concurred that their baptisms in the Jordan River ranked among the highest.
“It was awesome,” said Dennie Lynch, repeating his wife’s earlier reference.
Loretta Lynch agreed with the word choice.
“Yes, awesome suits it quite well,” she said. “It was such a tremendous feeling.”
Asked what he felt after the baptism, which was presided over by McClendon, Dennie Lynch without hesitation said that he felt “a new calmness.”
Although there were an estimated 300 people on the Lynches’ flight going to the Holy Land, Dennie Lynch said there were 29 in their group from Calvary Baptist, Joplin and surrounding areas.
Language was not a barrier, the couple said — almost everyone spoke English. The couple also noticed a great variety of churches, particularly in Jerusalem, from Baptist to Russian Orthodox.
One sight not commonly seen in the United States was a military presence in everyday life.
“Whether they were in uniform or not, any people in the military would have their guns with them as they walked down the streets,” Dennie Lynch said. “Also, when driving down the road, you would come to checkpoints where soldiers jumped on our bus with their machine guns and went up and down the aisle to make sure we were all tourists. We just had to hold up our passports and they were on the bus maybe 30 seconds. That was usually going in and out of Jerusalem and on the way to the airport.”
Although the Lynches said the food was tolerable, it would probably not be what you would write home about. A typical native lunch might consist of a fried chick pea sandwich on pita bread, which likely was a little difficult to dress up to the point of being mouth-watering.
But, behold, a king came to the rescue — at least on one occasion.
“One night a group of us took a taxi into downtown Jerusalem and went to a Burger King,” Loretta Lynch said.
Aside from the sacred, historical landmarks, the couple will likely never forget their trip to a Holocaust museum. They observed a children’s memorial with a black interior and tiny points of light representing children killed in World War II.
“There were apparently a million and a half Jewish children killed during the war,” Loretta Lynch said. “And when you go into this memorial, it is just one name right after another that comes out on a recording, which plays constantly with the names and ages of all the children. That was really something.”
Address correspondence to Rich Brown, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802 or e-mail rbrown@joplinglobe.com.
