Life in the JC

Around here, a lot of us that live at the BYU Jerusalem Center call it simply "the JC." While I admit it is definitely easier to say, as well as fairly catchy, it feels kind of odd and clique-y, like when you used to say things on your mission like AP, DL and P-Day, which left anyone unfamiliar with mission life completely clueless. But because I'm generally more of a lazy person than a catalyst for social change, I too have begun to use the term "the JC."

So here are some fun and random pictures of the various things we do that constitute our lives in the JC:

Linda, Abby and Joe on the day we went to the Zoo:

Its convenient and fun to hang out with the other kids at the JC. Here are a bunch of them playing with playdough on the patio, and legos in the living room:

The kids adore the BYU students and the BYU students adore/enjoy/tolerate the kids. Here's Abby hanging out with Mary Bennion in the stairwell, listening to music on Mary's headphones.

Every now and then we get VIP visitors. Elders Porter and Carlson of the Seventy and their wives visited us a few weeks back, and Jill and I had the pleasure of escorting the wives to do some olive wood shopping. We had a few minutes and slipped into the Garden Tomb area, where we ran into their husbands! We walked around and listened to Elder Porter teach us what he knows about Golgotha. The thing I'll remember most about this day, though, was looking up and seeing these men standing in the Garden, looking so noble in their suits and ties, so different from all the other tourists. Their countenance seemed to say "I have the answer to what you are looking for."

The JC has a great playground at the bottom of the grounds, with a lovely grassy hill for rolling. Here are Abby and Linda cheesing it up. Have you noticed yet their fashion sense? Anything pink goes:

Ed is happy to have found quite a few students to play volleyball with here, and for a while even toyed with the idea of making teams to try out coaching. Unfortunately he's been too busy for coaching, but he still plays whenever he can.

Abby loves water coolers and takes every opportunity to get a drink of water from one, often filling a cup for every person in the room. Here she is at the office where Mary had to get x-rays for her upcoming orthodontic excitement (a temporary retainer to fix her two front teeth that are pushing her lower teeth out of alignment).

I'm trying to get more pictures of Mary and Isaac, but they don't live to pose for the camera like Linda and Abby do.