I met up with a friend of mine who asked me if I wanted to meet with her as she was off to see the legendary Canon Andrew White, the vicar of Baghdad.  So it was a pleasure to do this one one evening, and met with a few other British and American people involved with various different types of ministry in the middle east.

Andrew has a knack for building relationships with Jews, Muslims and Christians from all over.   He spends a lot of time in Jordan these days with Arab Christians escaping with their lives from Iraq and Syria which are getting taken over by Islamic State.

A quick van ride with his Aramaic Christian driver, and we were on the Mount of Olives in the Seven Arches Hotel with its original 1970s interior 🙂

This piece of rock is very very very hot……

This was a type of cooking I have never seen before.   I don’t know if this is a middle east idea.   The Arab staff of this hotel brought out these dense concrete blocks with a piece of steak on it.    The block is baked in an oven and get so extremely hot, it aids cooking the steak, so you finish it off be rotating your piece of meat to the desired cooking time.

This was a really nice unexpected surprise during my two week trip in July 2015.