Mom sounded great when I talked to her today. I think they are well adjusted to the time change and have caught up on their sleep. She said they are all much more energized. They officially finished Psalms of Ascent and will begin Esther in the morning (which is about 1 hour from right now). She said God has been doing all sorts of neat things and going out of His way to say, “I love y’all. Keep it up!” On day three they filmed out in the wilderness, which my mom said was a really cool experience. She imagined David on the run, Jesus being tempted, and all the things that pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem would have experienced there. They filmed on the Mount of Olives that evening and the Lord painted a fabulous sunset for them. My mom gets to jazzed about sunsets, so it was not wasted on her!

I’ll go ahead and talk a little about the comments in this post. As some of you mentioned, definitely look for it to say, “Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.” Let me know if you’re seeing that and your comments still aren’t showing up. I’m sorry y’all are having to enter the code multiple times. I know it’s a pain. It would be so nice not to have to use that and comment moderation. But the alternative is very explicit spam (which we used to deal with on our guest book before we implemented the code) and other tackiness. But please don’t be paranoid about me thinking your comment is tacky. What I meant was if you leave a comment that says something ugly about my mom I will have great joy deleting it into oblivion. Was that tacky? Y’all know how it is with family. If you do have something to say that a daughter might not want to read, you can send it through the LPM contact page. Thanks so much!

This is random, but we invited the whole Saturday service crowd to dinner at Fuddrucker’s tonight. We were all crammed into a long table in the back room. There was a family we didn’t know sitting right behind us. Then a guy who has been visiting our church for the last couple of months came to join us. Seeing that there were no seats left, he took the chair next to the dad behind us, turned it around and sat next to him. You should have seen the look on the dad’s face! Curt said, “Dude, we don’t know them. They’re not with us.” Bless his heart! Would you not have just died?

I need to do a little survey if that’s okay. Please use this post to tell me if you have been leaving comments that never show up. I approve 99.9% of the comments, so if you’re having trouble with it, it’s got to be something else. Unless you said something tacky. And I’m sure you didn’t.

Ladies, the Lord is answering your prayers! Day two was a success. They were able to film 5 out of 7 sets of intros and outros for Psalms of Ascent. It was huge that they were able to knock so much out. It will give them some breathing room in case something unexpected happens later. It was also important because the Sabbath began at sundown. Pretty much everything shuts down until it’s over. When I went to Israel with my mom ten years ago, I saw that the elevators in the hotel stopped on every floor so that you wouldn’t have to press a button and do work on the Sabbath. So yeah, the Sabbath is serious business.

Day three will be spent outside of Jerusalem where they will be able to get more done. They will start filming for Esther at the start of the the Feast of Purim (sunset March 3 – nightfall March 5). I didn’t realize it, but they planned the trip for this exact time so they could be in Israel during this feast.

Their guide is actually an important and very well-loved person in the Israeli army. Mom said being in his company makes people think they are diplomats, which is very amusing to me. Do diplomats carry twelve pink lipsticks in their purses?

One cool answer to prayer is that my very claustrophobic dad did well when he had to go with the crew into some kind of ancient tunnel. When I was a kid he took me to the Sonora Caverns in West Texas and, bless his heart, he had to leave halfway through. So this was no small feat! You would not have known to pray for that, but the Holy Spirit did!

Mom asked me to tell you that she loves you very much and she thanks you for your intercession. It has been several hours since we spoke and I can’t remember the exact words she used, but I think they included sweet, darlin, precious, and beloved. Know that you are loved!

By the way, there are 2,000 of you praying for this trip. What an army! What does God have in store that He enlisted so many people to pray?

I was so excited to get to talk to my mom today. Those of you who have been to Israel know that the security setup at Ben Gurion Airport is rather challenging after a long flight. My parents hadn’t slept and sadly looked upon the long line they were going to have to wait in to have their bags searched. Then they noticed someone who was there to escort some lucky person out of the line into a private security area. The escort was holding a sign and before long they realized it said “Keith and Beth Moore.” Want He more praise? They were thrilled, to say the least.

The slept briefly and then headed out for a day of work. I think they did more preparation than actual filming. They ran into several Bible study sisters who were on pilgrimage in Jerusalem. That was probably a lot of fun. When I talked to her she was getting ready to get a good night’s sleep. They should be waking up about 10 p.m. our time to get ready for a day of filming. She does not have a female assistant with her to make sure she has every piece of her wardrobe, hairdo equipment, and other necessary things, so please pray that God causes her to remember to bring everything she needs without packing the whole hotel room. Maybe the anointing for that will fall upon my dad.

I wish I had more details for you, but we spent a lot of the time talking about the fact that today was Jackson’s first day at Mother’s Day Out! He’s in a class with children who are a little older than him, so we were eager to discuss how he would do with them. I mean, they sit in little chairs to eat their lunch and they take naps on the floor! My baby has never done those things! But his teachers said he did great and was happy the whole time. There was a little note in his bag telling me what all he had done today. (Even what time he’d had a dirty diaper. That is thorough, people!) I was ridiculously proud and happy reading that he’d had a great day. That’s going in the baby book for sure!