this is the day...this is the day...

Today was the first day of the last week. It was a lovely day in respect to the weather - we had cloud cover for most of the morning and the wind was blowing nicely keeping us cool. The B4 room is finished! I spent the morning clearing out the dirt and hardened mud around the cistern...so the room is complete. If you want to view the entire room you can scroll through it! Just go to the Public Pages on the virtual dig website, click on Fun Stuff, and click on the South Vaulted Chamber. It's pretty sweet! Apparently there was about 65 square meters of dirt removed from that room (I think that was the right figure). That's a LOT of dirt!

The rest of the day (for Nancy, Erin, and I) was spent working on the mosaic in the nave or center isle of the church. It was tedious work, but still very interesting. It is fun to watch patterns and colors appear where there used to be dirt. We are uncovering crosses on the floor (along with other patterns) and it's very exciting! Elsewhere teams are working on different sections of the church - the B0 team (Glenn, Jim, and Marc Hequet) are beginning to find a fairly decent mosaic floor (we believe) and the theory as it stands now (this changes frequently!) is that it was a pastoral room. The E2 team (Paul, Arny, and Mark Kaetsu) are working on the western part of the church. They are trying to find the floor! They are confident they will get to it by Tuesday!

Since it was Sunday we had our regular church service in the lab at 7:30pm. The Church service is always really incredible just because, as Andrea pointed out tonight, we are all gathered together with really nothing other than our bibles, each other, and some worship books - singing, praying, and praising God together. Last Sunday Dr. Mike gave the sermon - he talked about how through baptism we are connected to God, but also to each other and to all of Christendom. The coolest part is that we are connected to the woman who was buried in the Northeast Church. She was a believer too! And when we get to heaven we will be able to sit down and talk to her about her life, the church, and all that went on there so many years ago. God is good! And we can praise His name together!

I pray all of you were able to enjoy being in God’s presence today and every day. May His glory and peace be with you always!