There's gold in them there ruins

Gold...it has started wars, created klondike fever, and has been something that mankind has sought after since the beginning of time. The Israelites built a calf out of gold and worshipped it when Moses took too long to come down from the mountain, and Paul speaks of God's faithfulness and gifts to us that will not tarnish, and are better than refiners gold. We have envisioned heaven as a place where the streets are paved with gold, and so it was with much hoopla that Cameron emerged from the depths of the cistern up at Hippos yesterday and announced to everyone..."Gold, I found gold!!" and so he did. What he found down there was a clasp that would be used to hold the top of a woman's dress together, made out of pure gold. What is even more remarkable about this is that it looks as if someone could have gone down to the mall and just purchased this piece at a jewellery shop. If this clasp is 1500 years or older, then it is remarkably well preserved, and we can marvel even more at Paul's annalogy.
The crypt crew are a bit dissapointed I think due to the fact that they didn't find more under the sarcophagus. They did find some more bones though, and Glen isn't giving up yet on finding something else. Our mosaic floor recovery team of which Joyce and myself are a part are scraping away at the mosaic floor to find Dr. Schuler an inscription that may be carved there which might answer a number of questions regarding who these burial chambers belong to, or at the least who donated the money to build the church as was the custom of the day...kind of like getting a library named after you these days.
We are in the final week of the dig for our Canadian crew and 6 others from the states. The rest will be staying on to finish the dig season and will be joined by a few more replacements. Already I understand what it is that draws these people back here year after year. Some have been here every year since the beginning, some 3 years, some two and others like ourselves who have come for their first year. The work is brutal, the hours are terrible (5am-noon), the sun is unrelenting, and the kibbutz food is, well...Yet once you have been up there it becoms a part of you. You are always anticipating what will be found next that will help to fill in the pieces, and the shear scope of the history of what we are doing all contribute to this thing being like a drug that you get hooked on. I know that with our path to the ministry it is highly unlikely that we will be able to return...but it is a part of us now, and we will follow this dig on the internet and through all the great friends we have made here for as long as it continues.
That being said, thoughts are beginning to turn homeward and linden's wedding, and then our move to Kitimat. We miss our kids terribly, and I think I will even be happy to see George again when we arrive. Dan is ready to go now, and so is Doctor Chambers I think, but we will march up that hill three more times before coming home...We need to find that inscription before we leave!!!