Even after 18 trips to Israel, Pastor Frank Book still gets excited each and every time.The Piedmont Crossplains Church pastor hosts a Christian ministry organization called Moriah Ministries, which takes people to the Biblical land of Israel. He said his aim is to take individuals and church groups who normally would not get the chance to go on a trip like this in order to give them a spiritual and physical experience like no other. “It’s a matter of not just giving them the opportunity to tour Israel, but to experience the land, the people and the worship,” Book said.
Book and 35 others just recently returned from this year’s trip on March 19.
Book said this year’s group included people from Alabama, Georgia and Ohio, as well as a number of teenagers from the community. He said having the teens on the trip gave him and the other adults a new view of what may be just ancient relics of the Bible to some. “They really have the trip a whole new life,” he said.
The group visited a number of Biblical landmarks including the temple of Capemaum where Jesus taught, the Western Wall and the Pool of Bethsade where the lain man was healed.
Book said seeing actual places mentioned in the Bible brought a whole new spiritual perspective to the group. “It’s amazing because you get to see that [the Bible] is not a fable or a fairytale,” he said. “You can actually see that the Bible comes alive.”
While Israel is portrayed as war-torn country in the media, Book asserts the whole country is not that way. “It’s not like it is portrayed on TV,” he said. “It’s two groups of people, that are brothers, trying to co-exist in a land that the whole world is looking upon.”
He said the group never encountered any problems along the way.
While visiting sites, some of the teens on the trip were able to perform some “worship dances,” routines they perform with their dance team called Moriah, Book said.
Hannah Hutcheson, one of the teens on the trip, said the experience of seeing the Golden Dome at Mount Olives was when the impact of the trip really hit her. “It finally hit me that I was in Israel, the Promised Land, and I just began to cry,” she said.
Lacee Watkins had a similar experience in the Garden of Gethesmane at Mount Olives. Watkins said she remembered a scene in the 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ where Jesus prayed in the garden, and was inspired to do her own praying. “When I began to pray in the garden all the things I had imaged in my mind came alive to me,” she said. “It was just awesome.”
The experience is the same for many of the people Book takes on the trip each year, he said. “That’s why I do it – to see people change and to see them experience God like they never have before,” Book said. “It’s to see people let God become real to them and see God jump from the pages of the Bible.”
Book said the impact on teens is one of the most touching ones he sees from year to year. “A lot of adults will go and experience God and have a total metamorphosis,” he said. “But kids, they have so many walls around them normally and to see them break through those, it’s a pretty emotional experience.”
Moriah Ministries was founded with the intent of bringing about ‘emotional experiences’ like that, Book said. While the ministry hosts individuals and church groups on the trip, it does not cover the cost of the trip. Book said the $2,500 cost per person of the trip this year was raised in part by the Moriah Dance Team hosting fundraisers at a number of churches. He said the some $5,500 the team raised went towards the cost of the trip for some the teens that went.
Book said leaving Israel was one of the hardest parts for the group this year because many of the teens became attached their new “spiritual home.” Hutcheson agreed.
“We cried to the airport, at the airport and on the way from the airport,” she said. “It became real to us that we thought we were going home, but we were actually leaving home.”
Book said he hopes to branch his ministry out to include a number of other church groups and individuals that have never had the chance to go on a trip to Israel.
He wants to see more people experience the same change that he has seen every year for nearly two decades. “We always bring them home safe and sound, but totally changed,” Book said. “They’ll never be the same.”
