While I was a student at the BYU Jerusalem Center in the Fall Semester of 2000, I was having a hard time early on, being distracted by a problem at home. My focus was on trying to keep a long-distance relationship working with a girlfriend. As a result, I wasn’t paying attention enough to the extraordinary learning environment. Realizing I needed help to take advantage of deeper spiritual experiences there, I asked my three roommates to give me a priesthood blessing.
Soon after the blessing, all of us students travelled to stay in Galilee for a couple weeks as a part of our instruction. We lived in little huts on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.
What was incredible to me was the effect that the blessing seemed to be having on me. As I entered different cities of Galilee and spent time in the areas where Christ spent most of His life, I felt a noticeable difference there than I did while at any of the sites in Jerusalem. It was as if Christ’s presence was stamped in Galilee and remained there. I could feel Him there.
Specifically, at the Church of St. Joseph in Nazareth, I saw the Holy Family statue in the side of the building. As I looked on it, I was struck with an immediate sense of awe by the sweetness of the Spirit, filling me with a sensation of love and appreciation for Christ’s mortal family. It was a clearer and deeper spiritual experience than I had had up to that point in my studies there.
It seemed as if the priesthood blessing was helping me be more sensitive to Christ’s influence there in the Holy Land. I was able to sense that Christ’s calm power, warm peacefulness, and sweet presence was quietly radiating from those areas in which He lived and preached during His mortal ministry.
The carryover effects of the blessing continued, too. Later on, when back at the Jerusalem Center, I was able to understand what the Lord wanted for me in that relationship. To know His will better, I went into the library, brought my scriptures with me, and studied them with the resources there. It seemed as if the words of Christ came alive in the scriptures and from other teachings of modern-day prophets that seemed to jump out at me. He was tutoring me, giving me instruction after instruction, about what was true and what I should be doing to bring that relationship to an end, which I had earlier been trying so hard to maintain.
I’m grateful for Christ’s power that worked on me in the Holy Land. It helped me figuratively see Him there, gain a richer testimony of His prophets and the scriptures, and be taught from Him on high about how to get through my then-current struggles.
Over the years, I’ve been able to see how right He was to direct me into other relationships, including a close friendship from my BYU Jerusalem experience that helped show me the type of person I should be seeking in a future wife. That friend from the BYU Jerusalem Center happened to also be a friend of the woman I eventually married in the temple and that same friend helped me during the trying times of my first wife’s passing.
Christ truly can help us in a number of ways in the details of our lives.
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