WEBVTT
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This is digging deeper.
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Season three.
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Bonus episode.
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And someone in my tour group into this day.
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I don't know who it was.
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Gasp! It was an I heard it audible gasp yeah! And at that point I was hooked.
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All of the work and everything that goes into organizing a tour, and everything led paid off right then.
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And at that point I was hooked because I had reached somebody.
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I don't know who it was.
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And it was only because I'd pointed out a river, but it clicked with somebody.
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And after that, I was kind of hooked.
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Well, my name is Barry.
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And I'm Dan Kingsley.
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And we have just, we're in the process of putting together the next season of Digging Deeper podcast.
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Season three. Season three. Wow.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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But, we thought we'd just introduce ourselves and talk about some of the things that we do a little bit.
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Dan and I in the past have led tours to some of these lands in the Bible, and we thought that we would just spend a few minutes talking about some of the things that have happened.
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I'll even go back a little bit.
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You do a lot more tours than I do.
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I kind of do them as asked.
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But you actually have a company and you do some throughout the year.
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But we both have day jobs.
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Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
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Which interferes with all the fun. Really?
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Yeah. It pays the bills. That's right.
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My my kids and my wife that we love to eat and things like that.
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So we got to do that.
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Taking people to the lands of the Bible and letting them see what they've read about.
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That is so fun. Yeah.
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Just to see the look in their eyes.
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Which is why we both do this.
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That's exactly right.
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I mean, I love teaching about biblical geography, but there's no better teacher of the land than the land itself.
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And I remember the very first tour that I led, I was extremely nervous, and I guess I still am some degree whenever lead tour.
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But I was extremely nervous and we got up that first morning we went to Caesarea, and that's always a very good first stop.
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And we went to the top of Mount Carmel.
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And when we got up there, I read the passage about Elijah and against the prophets of Baal and and all that.
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And when the last verse or so of that talks about how he they took the prophets down to the brook Keyshawn, and killed them down there, and when I said that, I, I pointed my finger, I turned around, I put my finger and I said, no.
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Right down there is the Brook, Keyshawn, and someone in my tour group.
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And to this day I don't know who it was.
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Gasp! It was an I heard it.
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An audible gasp.
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Yeah, and at that point I was hooked.
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All of the work and everything that goes into organizing a tour, and everything led paid off right then.
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And at that point I was hooked because I had reached somebody.
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I don't know who it was, and it was only because I'd pointed out a river, but it clicked with somebody, and after that, I was kind of hooked.
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I love it. Same.
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I can think of a lady.
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We'd been out walking all day, you know, and you're on the bus a lot, you know?
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You. So it's air conditioned.
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It's not that bad, but it's dusty and everybody's in sandals and and said, how are you doing?
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And she said, I can't wait till I get back to the hotel so I can take my sandals off and wash my feet.
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Yeah.
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And Austin, her face just changed. Yeah.
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And she started crying, and she now I know.
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Yeah. And and.
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She had read. My past.
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Read about a hundred times. Yes.
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And she knew. Well, your feet are dirty.
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You need to wash them.
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But all of a sudden it clicked that.
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What a sign of hospitality for someone to do that. For you.
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I mean, over the years, I've had everything happened on that first trip, I actually had a woman fall and, her hurt her leg.
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I mean, fairly significantly, she had to have some some stitches and everything in her leg and, you know, being able to pull a tour like this together requires a bunch of people.
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And one of the key people is your guide.
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Yes, we've we've used some excellent guides on our tours, and I was reminded of that when this lady got hurt because a couple of days later, obviously with this injury, she had some problems walking around.
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And we were we got up one morning, and that morning we were going to go to Masada.
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And once you you can ride a lift up to the top of Masada.
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But up there once, once you get up there, there's sidewalks and everything.
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And I thought I was eating breakfast.
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I thought, you know what?
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If we had a wheelchair, this woman could experience Masada.
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And so I quickly finished breakfast, and I went upstairs and found the guide, who was actually in the lobby waiting on us.
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And I said, hey, if we had a wheelchair, this woman could experience Masada.
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And he said, it's already on the bus.
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And and is that it's that type of people that you can surround yourself with and you're like, okay, I'm with the right people.
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We can pull this off.
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We can do a great job.
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And, that was a wonderful thing as well.
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We're looking for the Asclepius, and we went down a very narrow road.
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Evidently, it was going to be a shortcut.
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And then there was enough of a twisty twist in the road that we could no longer go forward.
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Now, if they even thought that there was, like, a 5% chance we could have made it, they would have tried.
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Yeah, we are man enough to admit defeat and we are reversing.
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Had several things that have been interesting with the driving today.
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But all in all, the drivers and the fixer are doing a great job and they're getting us to all of the locations.
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Always nice to have a guide who thinks about what you need before you even notice you need it.
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Well, and you know, with the God that I use in Israel, his name is Gus.
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A lot of times people will see us talking on the bus, but I guarantee you we're not talking about what we're going to do next.
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We're talking about what we're going to do three days from now.
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I mean, because that's the discussions that you have to have in order to make everything flow smoothly.
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I bet y'all were talking a lot this last.
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Last year on.
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Back last June, I had a tour group over there in which we got caught in the 12 Day War, and it was an interesting experience.
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And, I have tried not to talk about it too much.
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Not because I don't want to talk about it, but it's because I don't want I want the people who traveled with me to have the the ability to talk about it however they want to talk about it.
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If they are very negative about the tour and everything that happened, I want them to have the ability to say that I have no problem with that.
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People.
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People are people, and they're going to experience things in different ways.
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But, you know, I we sat on the porch at the hotel and Tiberius and watched Iranian missiles fly over our head.
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I mean, they looked like little airplanes way up in the sky.
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But as soon as we could safely, you know, get out of the country, which took a couple of days.
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We did, but even while we were there, we tried to just be calm.
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And a lot of that reflects on the people who traveled with me.
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It's interesting because people, most of the people who travel with me and you as well, are people who believe in God.
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And they believe that they're doing there faithful children of God.
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And regardless of what may happen in life, everything's going to be okay.
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So when we were over there last June.
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You know, we wanted to go home and we were concerned, but nobody panicked because we knew that everything was going to be okay regardless of what might happen.
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But in all seriousness, even though you may see things on the news, we were really never in any real danger when we were over there.
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Despite the fact that you could see missiles flying over, they weren't headed in our direction, so we knew that we weren't in any danger.
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But, it is. It's interesting.
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You never know what's going to happen.
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And that's with travel in general.
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I mean, part of travel that's interesting is just the experiences that you have.
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The people you get to see.
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Yeah, I think both of us, both with leading tours as well as just with happy media, we've had some unique opportunities.
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Just pull into somebody's front yard and say, hey, can we film here?
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Yeah.
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Next thing you know, they're bringing you cups of tea.
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Yeah.
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I think there are mean, nasty people in the world, but a lot of people, I think, just want better for their kids than they have.
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That most people in the world are genuinely wonderful people.
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And I think traveling internationally helps you to understand that it's easy for all of us to live in our bubble.
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You know, I go to work with these people.
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I'm in the neighborhood with these people.
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I go to church with these people.
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And that's the extent of your world.
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And there's nothing wrong with that.
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I mean, that's why we chose to live there and go to church there.
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Do you want to be around these people?
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But when you travel, outside of your bubble, especially if you travel internationally, you learn that most of the people in the world are just like you.
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Yes, exactly what you said.
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They're looking to try to, you know, they're trying to put food on the table, and they're trying to raise kids to be good, honest people.
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And that's a wonderful thing to see.
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And you and I have both made wonderful friends.
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People, as we've traveled.
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And so it's really just a joy.
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Yeah, there's always something that seems to happen.
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And if you run into a tour guide who's done it for a long time.
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Yeah, the stories they can tell you.
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Yeah, you, you and I've seen some things.
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I mean, when you and I were in Turkey one time, we had a couple pulled over to the side as we were going through security at this in Bull Airport, only to realize that, this lady mistakenly had a pair of scissors and the bag she was trying to carry on.
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And, you know, she didn't mean to.
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It seemed like it was a pair of knitting sets or something she was using in sewing. But, you know, that caused us to turn around and panic a little bit with thought.
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Why is this lady being pulled over? Yeah.
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Or sometimes, you learn you need to hold on to your own passport.
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In your own phone.
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Yeah.
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That same trip we had a couple in the Frankfurt airport who had gotten separated, and one of them had both cell phones.
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One of them had both passports, and somehow one of them was at passport control, and one of them was at a different passport control.
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Things happened.
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They they they do.
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It's one of those things that you just you just never know, what's going to happen from day to day.
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And that's part of the role of a tour leader is, I've told people before, if you want to be a successful tour leader, you have to know two things.
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One is where the next bathroom stop is.
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Absolutely.
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And the second one is, where's the next food stop?
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That's all you have to know.
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All of the biblical stuff.
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Well, that'll work itself out.
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Well, we can we can talk about that.
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But you got to know where the next restroom is and where the next food stop is, because that's what that's what's on people's mind.
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And actually that that just brings me back to 2020.
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Yeah.
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We were supposed to help somebody out who was doing excursions for a cruise.
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And that was the big question is, if you leave the cruise ship with four busses of people.
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Yeah. Where's the next bathroom stop.
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That's right.
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That changed the logistics of everything was.
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That's right.
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Well, and speaking of speaking of Covid, I was fortunate enough, through a series of events to lead the very first tour group back to Israel post-Covid.
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And God blessed those 20 people who travel with me because they had to jump through a number of hoops.
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First of all, they had to have both vaccinations, whether they agreed to wanted to have them or not, they had to have both vaccinations 48 hours before we left.
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They haven't had a negative PCR test.
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Then we had to have another PCR test as soon as we landed in Israel, and then we were confined to the hotel for a blood test, and we couldn't leave the hotel until all those things had passed.
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But then once we did, the great thing was, is we had the entire country by ourselves.
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Oh, yeah.
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So you go to a site and it's just you and nobody.
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There were times, and I mean, you and I've been to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, in which it was a four hour wait to get into the air.
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Cool.
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Well, on that trip, we were the only people in the entire building.
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And so it was really kind of an interesting thing.
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But it's just one of those things.
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It is.
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Well, just thinking about leading tours.
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You have to have been there and know a little bit to take somebody there.
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Usually. Usually, yeah.
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I know my first trip to the lands of the Bible was in 2011, and I think I'm up to 17 now.
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Yeah, you started even earlier than I.
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Did just one year.
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I went to the first time in 2010, and I've made about as many trips as you have, I think 16, 17, 18 trips.
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I lose count as well.
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But it's interesting.
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One of the things that I learned when I go over there is that I still have a lot to learn.
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Oh, my list of things I need to go see gets longer.
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Every time I cross something off, I add 2 or 3 to it.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But when you lead it to where you're going to a lot of similar places because you're taking a group who has never been.
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Does that still excite you?
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I like it used to.
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Every hour of every day I'm over there.
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It's because I just want to say there's so much to learn.
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I ask as many questions as the people who have been over there for the first time, because there's just so much to, to learn.
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And, and the more that we learn, and I know you've seen this before to is the more you understand the Bible and of course, the more you understand the Bible, the more you understand God.
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And that's the beauty of the everything.
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Yeah.
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And what also really just excites me, in addition to going over myself, being able to show others.
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Yeah, is our involvement with that being media, we've been able to expose even more people to it.
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And then this podcast, we're getting ready to start season three.
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Yeah, is we're exposing even more people to the lands of the Bible.
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It's a wonderful thing.
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And I'm looking forward to it with you.
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Well, leading tours is fun, but, you know, it's even more fun digging deeper.
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And I can't wait for us to to get started on that and release that for everybody else.
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And that again, because my snort was audible and I.
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So to do with everything.
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So, Dan, where are we right now?
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We're on Mount.
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I almost said Arbor.
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Hold on. All good.
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Where are we?
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My mind just went blank. Mount Bentall.
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Thank. You, thank you.
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Okay.
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So we're on Mount Bentall right now, which is up in the Golan Heights.
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This is digging deeper.
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Season three.
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Bonus episode.
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And someone in my tour group into this day.
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I don't know who it was.
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Gasp! It was an I heard it audible gasp yeah! And at that point I was hooked.
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All of the work and everything that goes into organizing a tour, and everything led paid off right then.
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And at that point I was hooked because I had reached somebody.
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I don't know who it was.
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And it was only because I'd pointed out a river, but it clicked with somebody.
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And after that, I was kind of hooked.
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Well, my name is Barry.
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And I'm Dan Kingsley.
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And we have just, we're in the process of putting together the next season of Digging Deeper podcast.
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Season three. Season three. Wow.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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But, we thought we'd just introduce ourselves and talk about some of the things that we do a little bit.
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Dan and I in the past have led tours to some of these lands in the Bible, and we thought that we would just spend a few minutes talking about some of the things that have happened.
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I'll even go back a little bit.
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You do a lot more tours than I do.
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I kind of do them as asked.
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But you actually have a company and you do some throughout the year.
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But we both have day jobs.
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Yeah. That's right. Yeah.
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Which interferes with all the fun. Really?
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Yeah. It pays the bills. That's right.
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My my kids and my wife that we love to eat and things like that.
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So we got to do that.
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Taking people to the lands of the Bible and letting them see what they've read about.
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That is so fun. Yeah.
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Just to see the look in their eyes.
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Which is why we both do this.
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That's exactly right.
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I mean, I love teaching about biblical geography, but there's no better teacher of the land than the land itself.
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And I remember the very first tour that I led, I was extremely nervous, and I guess I still am some degree whenever lead tour.
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But I was extremely nervous and we got up that first morning we went to Caesarea, and that's always a very good first stop.
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And we went to the top of Mount Carmel.
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And when we got up there, I read the passage about Elijah and against the prophets of Baal and and all that.
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And when the last verse or so of that talks about how he they took the prophets down to the brook Keyshawn, and killed them down there, and when I said that, I, I pointed my finger, I turned around, I put my finger and I said, no.
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Right down there is the Brook, Keyshawn, and someone in my tour group.
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And to this day I don't know who it was.
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Gasp! It was an I heard it.
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An audible gasp.
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Yeah, and at that point I was hooked.
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All of the work and everything that goes into organizing a tour, and everything led paid off right then.
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And at that point I was hooked because I had reached somebody.
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I don't know who it was, and it was only because I'd pointed out a river, but it clicked with somebody, and after that, I was kind of hooked.
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I love it. Same.
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I can think of a lady.
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We'd been out walking all day, you know, and you're on the bus a lot, you know?
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You. So it's air conditioned.
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It's not that bad, but it's dusty and everybody's in sandals and and said, how are you doing?
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And she said, I can't wait till I get back to the hotel so I can take my sandals off and wash my feet.
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Yeah.
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And Austin, her face just changed. Yeah.
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And she started crying, and she now I know.
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Yeah. And and.
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She had read. My past.
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Read about a hundred times. Yes.
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And she knew. Well, your feet are dirty.
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You need to wash them.
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But all of a sudden it clicked that.
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What a sign of hospitality for someone to do that. For you.
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I mean, over the years, I've had everything happened on that first trip, I actually had a woman fall and, her hurt her leg.
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I mean, fairly significantly, she had to have some some stitches and everything in her leg and, you know, being able to pull a tour like this together requires a bunch of people.
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And one of the key people is your guide.
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Yes, we've we've used some excellent guides on our tours, and I was reminded of that when this lady got hurt because a couple of days later, obviously with this injury, she had some problems walking around.
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And we were we got up one morning, and that morning we were going to go to Masada.
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And once you you can ride a lift up to the top of Masada.
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But up there once, once you get up there, there's sidewalks and everything.
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And I thought I was eating breakfast.
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I thought, you know what?
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If we had a wheelchair, this woman could experience Masada.
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And so I quickly finished breakfast, and I went upstairs and found the guide, who was actually in the lobby waiting on us.
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And I said, hey, if we had a wheelchair, this woman could experience Masada.
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And he said, it's already on the bus.
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And and is that it's that type of people that you can surround yourself with and you're like, okay, I'm with the right people.
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We can pull this off.
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We can do a great job.
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And, that was a wonderful thing as well.
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We're looking for the Asclepius, and we went down a very narrow road.
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Evidently, it was going to be a shortcut.
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And then there was enough of a twisty twist in the road that we could no longer go forward.
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Now, if they even thought that there was, like, a 5% chance we could have made it, they would have tried.
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Yeah, we are man enough to admit defeat and we are reversing.
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Had several things that have been interesting with the driving today.
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But all in all, the drivers and the fixer are doing a great job and they're getting us to all of the locations.
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Always nice to have a guide who thinks about what you need before you even notice you need it.
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Well, and you know, with the God that I use in Israel, his name is Gus.
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A lot of times people will see us talking on the bus, but I guarantee you we're not talking about what we're going to do next.
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We're talking about what we're going to do three days from now.
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I mean, because that's the discussions that you have to have in order to make everything flow smoothly.
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I bet y'all were talking a lot this last.
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Last year on.
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Back last June, I had a tour group over there in which we got caught in the 12 Day War, and it was an interesting experience.
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And, I have tried not to talk about it too much.
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Not because I don't want to talk about it, but it's because I don't want I want the people who traveled with me to have the the ability to talk about it however they want to talk about it.
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If they are very negative about the tour and everything that happened, I want them to have the ability to say that I have no problem with that.
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People.
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People are people, and they're going to experience things in different ways.
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But, you know, I we sat on the porch at the hotel and Tiberius and watched Iranian missiles fly over our head.
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I mean, they looked like little airplanes way up in the sky.
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But as soon as we could safely, you know, get out of the country, which took a couple of days.
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We did, but even while we were there, we tried to just be calm.
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And a lot of that reflects on the people who traveled with me.
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It's interesting because people, most of the people who travel with me and you as well, are people who believe in God.
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And they believe that they're doing there faithful children of God.
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And regardless of what may happen in life, everything's going to be okay.
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So when we were over there last June.
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You know, we wanted to go home and we were concerned, but nobody panicked because we knew that everything was going to be okay regardless of what might happen.
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But in all seriousness, even though you may see things on the news, we were really never in any real danger when we were over there.
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Despite the fact that you could see missiles flying over, they weren't headed in our direction, so we knew that we weren't in any danger.
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But, it is. It's interesting.
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You never know what's going to happen.
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And that's with travel in general.
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I mean, part of travel that's interesting is just the experiences that you have.
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The people you get to see.
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Yeah, I think both of us, both with leading tours as well as just with happy media, we've had some unique opportunities.
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Just pull into somebody's front yard and say, hey, can we film here?
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Yeah.
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Next thing you know, they're bringing you cups of tea.
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Yeah.
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I think there are mean, nasty people in the world, but a lot of people, I think, just want better for their kids than they have.
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That most people in the world are genuinely wonderful people.
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And I think traveling internationally helps you to understand that it's easy for all of us to live in our bubble.
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You know, I go to work with these people.
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I'm in the neighborhood with these people.
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I go to church with these people.
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And that's the extent of your world.
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And there's nothing wrong with that.
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I mean, that's why we chose to live there and go to church there.
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Do you want to be around these people?
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But when you travel, outside of your bubble, especially if you travel internationally, you learn that most of the people in the world are just like you.
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Yes, exactly what you said.
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They're looking to try to, you know, they're trying to put food on the table, and they're trying to raise kids to be good, honest people.
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And that's a wonderful thing to see.
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And you and I have both made wonderful friends.
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People, as we've traveled.
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And so it's really just a joy.
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Yeah, there's always something that seems to happen.
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And if you run into a tour guide who's done it for a long time.
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Yeah, the stories they can tell you.
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Yeah, you, you and I've seen some things.
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I mean, when you and I were in Turkey one time, we had a couple pulled over to the side as we were going through security at this in Bull Airport, only to realize that, this lady mistakenly had a pair of scissors and the bag she was trying to carry on.
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And, you know, she didn't mean to.
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It seemed like it was a pair of knitting sets or something she was using in sewing. But, you know, that caused us to turn around and panic a little bit with thought.
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Why is this lady being pulled over? Yeah.
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Or sometimes, you learn you need to hold on to your own passport.
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In your own phone.
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Yeah.
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That same trip we had a couple in the Frankfurt airport who had gotten separated, and one of them had both cell phones.
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One of them had both passports, and somehow one of them was at passport control, and one of them was at a different passport control.
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Things happened.
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They they they do.
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It's one of those things that you just you just never know, what's going to happen from day to day.
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And that's part of the role of a tour leader is, I've told people before, if you want to be a successful tour leader, you have to know two things.
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One is where the next bathroom stop is.
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Absolutely.
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And the second one is, where's the next food stop?
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That's all you have to know.
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All of the biblical stuff.
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Well, that'll work itself out.
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Well, we can we can talk about that.
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But you got to know where the next restroom is and where the next food stop is, because that's what that's what's on people's mind.
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And actually that that just brings me back to 2020.
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Yeah.
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We were supposed to help somebody out who was doing excursions for a cruise.
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And that was the big question is, if you leave the cruise ship with four busses of people.
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Yeah. Where's the next bathroom stop.
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That's right.
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That changed the logistics of everything was.
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That's right.
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Well, and speaking of speaking of Covid, I was fortunate enough, through a series of events to lead the very first tour group back to Israel post-Covid.
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And God blessed those 20 people who travel with me because they had to jump through a number of hoops.
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First of all, they had to have both vaccinations, whether they agreed to wanted to have them or not, they had to have both vaccinations 48 hours before we left.
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They haven't had a negative PCR test.
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Then we had to have another PCR test as soon as we landed in Israel, and then we were confined to the hotel for a blood test, and we couldn't leave the hotel until all those things had passed.
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But then once we did, the great thing was, is we had the entire country by ourselves.
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Oh, yeah.
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So you go to a site and it's just you and nobody.
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There were times, and I mean, you and I've been to the church of the Holy Sepulcher, in which it was a four hour wait to get into the air.
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Cool.
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Well, on that trip, we were the only people in the entire building.
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And so it was really kind of an interesting thing.
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But it's just one of those things.
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It is.
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Well, just thinking about leading tours.
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You have to have been there and know a little bit to take somebody there.
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Usually. Usually, yeah.
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I know my first trip to the lands of the Bible was in 2011, and I think I'm up to 17 now.
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Yeah, you started even earlier than I.
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Did just one year.
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I went to the first time in 2010, and I've made about as many trips as you have, I think 16, 17, 18 trips.
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I lose count as well.
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But it's interesting.
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One of the things that I learned when I go over there is that I still have a lot to learn.
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Oh, my list of things I need to go see gets longer.
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Every time I cross something off, I add 2 or 3 to it.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But when you lead it to where you're going to a lot of similar places because you're taking a group who has never been.
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Does that still excite you?
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I like it used to.
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Every hour of every day I'm over there.
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It's because I just want to say there's so much to learn.
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I ask as many questions as the people who have been over there for the first time, because there's just so much to, to learn.
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And, and the more that we learn, and I know you've seen this before to is the more you understand the Bible and of course, the more you understand the Bible, the more you understand God.
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And that's the beauty of the everything.
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Yeah.
00:13:49.912 --> 00:13:57.461
And what also really just excites me, in addition to going over myself, being able to show others.
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Yeah, is our involvement with that being media, we've been able to expose even more people to it.
00:14:03.133 --> 00:14:06.470
And then this podcast, we're getting ready to start season three.
00:14:06.511 --> 00:14:10.890
Yeah, is we're exposing even more people to the lands of the Bible.
00:14:10.975 --> 00:14:12.518
It's a wonderful thing.
00:14:12.518 --> 00:14:14.227
And I'm looking forward to it with you.
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Well, leading tours is fun, but, you know, it's even more fun digging deeper.
00:14:29.033 --> 00:14:35.124
And I can't wait for us to to get started on that and release that for everybody else.
00:14:36.082 --> 00:14:40.546
And that again, because my snort was audible and I.
00:14:42.505 --> 00:14:44.966
So to do with everything.
00:14:44.966 --> 00:14:46.719
So, Dan, where are we right now?
00:14:46.719 --> 00:14:48.928
We're on Mount.
00:14:48.928 --> 00:14:51.932
I almost said Arbor.
00:14:52.224 --> 00:14:53.642
Hold on. All good.
00:14:53.642 --> 00:14:55.101
Where are we?
00:14:55.101 --> 00:14:57.354
My mind just went blank. Mount Bentall.
00:14:57.354 --> 00:14:59.480
Thank. You, thank you.
00:14:59.480 --> 00:15:01.692
Okay.
00:15:01.692 --> 00:15:05.613
So we're on Mount Bentall right now, which is up in the Golan Heights.
