For many people, the holiday season may mean traveling to a relative’s house or taking a tropical vacation somewhere, but for a few people in Albert Lea it meant seeing the most ancient lands in the world.

The 32- person team led by Darcy and Dwight Netzer just got back from a 10 day trip to Israel.

“Darcy and I first took a trip to Israel a few years ago and we enjoyed it so much that we wanted to take our church there.” said Dwight.

Dwight is the pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Albert Lea.

It took about a full day to get there. They left Minneapolis and flew into Philadelphia, PA. From there they flew into Tel Aviv, Israel. They stayed in the region of Galilee in what is called a Kaputs, which is a self sustained community, that hosts visitors from around the world.

“It was really cool to see all the historical places that are written about in the bible,” Darcy said. “We saw the house where Jesus healed Paul’s mother, which was amazing to see because they know that is the exact house in which it happened, based on artifacts they found there.” Other sights they saw were: the wailing wall, the Garden of Gethsemane, Mecca, Caesarea, and many more.

The food there is not like the food in the United States. Their main diet consists of fruit, bread, olives, and coffee. “It was very interesting, there are very strict nutritional laws

that they must follow,” Darcy said. Because of their religious beliefs, they can’t eat meat with dairy products in the same meal.

“We could never have cheese with our meals. We also couldn’t have coffee with a meal that had meat, because most people drink coffee with cream.”

They will be taking a second group on the same trip in February, because so many people from their church wanted to go