Covid Changed Our Tour Sites and Short Stories Changed Our Hearts

In June of 2018, I began dreaming of returning to Israel for a second trip. My hubby Roy and I had made our first pilgrimage in 2000. We thought a 2020 trip to celebrate my 10th traditionally published novel, Isaiah’s Legacy, was a great reason to organize a readers’ tour of the biblical and historical sites mentioned in my books. We began planning over a year before our March 2020 “Experience the BOOK” tour. It’s hard to remember the days before Covid changed our world, isn’t it? Who could have guessed we would be the last American tour group in Israel when Covid-19 swept the globe? (U.S. travelers pictured above. International tour members met us in Israel.)

As part of a gift package to the readers who joined our tour, I wrote several short stories to read at corresponding biblical or historical sites in Israel. Though Covid changed some of our touring sites, our God still used those stories to work in our hearts. On April 2, 2024, I’ll be releasing 3 of those short stories on Amazon in a collection called, The Nameless Ones–biblical stories about people important enough for Scripture’s record but not mentioned by name. The lives of The 700th Wife, The Water Girl, and The Mole’s Wife were first read aloud on Israel’s soil in unforgettable circumstances…

First Day – Caesarea and Mount Carmel

After our red-eye flight “across the Pond,” we arrived in Tel Aviv at 10am local time. Our amazing guide, Hedva, was at Ben Gurion to greet us. Blurry eyed, but with enough adrenaline to push us, we pressed on with a rush of excitement, anticipation, and awe to explore God’s Promised Land. We began our tour along the Mediterranean Coast in Caesarea with the amphitheater, the remains of Herod’s palace, and the hippodrome.

From there, we traveled to Mount Carmel. We needed a little distraction on the thirty-minute bus ride between the historical and biblical sites. No matter how excited we were to be in Israel, our eyelids were drooping after many of us had gotten little sleep on the plane. Some had been awake for nearly forty-eight hours! So, I began reading aloud the first short story–The Water Girl–a fictional account of the girl who may have gathered the water to pour on Elijah’s altar of sacrifice (1 Kings 18).

Setting the Stage for Elijah

We were about to stand on Mount Carmel, the place where the Prophet Elijah met Queen Jezebel’s 450 prophets of Baal and proved Yahweh’s power greater. I wanted the story to come alive in their groggy minds before we climbed to the top of that mountain (hill).

Could The Water Girl have been one of the “they” mentioned in Scripture who drenched Elijah’s repaired altar before Yahweh’s fire lit the sacrifice?

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, ‘The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!'” 1 Kings 18:38–39

Could The Water Girl have needed a personal miracle from God as much as Israel needed relief from the drought?

Covid Invades Our Journey

When we left the U.S., we were told by some doctor friends to pack masks “just in case” some crazy new virus from China made its way to Israel. For our first four days of touring Israel’s sites, we were relatively unaffected by the world’s rising panic.

By day 5, however, Covid-19 popped our bubble of oblivion. When we arrived at the Jordan River’s baptismal site, the “robe rental” booth was closed. Why? Because all their employees had the Covid-19 virus!

That same day, Israel closed her borders. We had added a “3-day Petra extension” into the country of Jordan at the end of our tour but planned to re-enter Israel to fly home from Tel Aviv. We were faced with our first difficult decision:

1. Continue our tour as planned to Mt. Nebo and Petra, which meant changing our return flights home from Tel Aviv to an Amman, Jordan departure.
2. OR cancel our Petra extension (which 80% of the travelers had paid extra to do).

Though our faithful tour director (above) tried every trick in the book to switch our flights to Amman, it seemed everyone else was trying the same thing to get back to the U.S. So, we cancelled Petra to remain within Israel’s borders.

The short story I’d prepared to read on our way to Mt. Nebo, The Shepherd Boy, is included in my 2023 short-story collection, The Edge of Promise. Discover how I imagined a shepherd boy might have been the only witness to Moses’s mysterious death and how the boy’s life was forever changed (see Deut. 34:5-6).

I read The Shepherd Boy on our ascent to Jerusalem instead, trusting the same great God for whatever awaited us there…

To the City of David…

The day we entered Jerusalem was both exciting and unsettling. The first glimpse of its ancient walls and golden dome send a chill down my spine, but it wasn’t the same crowded, bustling city my husband and I remembered from our 2000 pilgrimage. In the wake of Covid’s uncertainties, only stragglers walked the streets. Many tourists had already fled the country. But we had more sites to see and short stories to read!

Before visiting the Western Wall of the Temple, I read The 700th Wife and we pondered together the life of King Solomon. Though the current temple wall dates back to King Herod, it was Solomon who built the original Temple in Jerusalem.

The Bible says King Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived. So, why did he marry seven hundred women? Who was The 700th Wife? Why did they marry? What was her purpose–political, religious, or personal connection? Because we have no historical record of her identity, my hope is that she influenced the spiritually wayward Solomon to recognize true wisdom in his final days on earth. Perhaps she helped him write these words:

“Remember Him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:6–7

Last Days

Covid numbers around the world continued to climb, and fear with them. Israel’s Old City became more and more desolate. Yet our faithful guide, Hedva, continued teaching us. Every day. All day. Rain or shine. Our little band of travelers tramped all over the Old City to soak up every word she poured out.

After three days in Jerusalem, we had only one more day of sites to see before moving to Tel Aviv for three free days to await our return flight home. We’d saved our most anticipated Jerusalem sites for the last day:

1. City of David
2. Hezekiah’s Tunnel

The night before, we got this information from the ministry of tourism: All tours within Israel’s borders are to be suspended. Any tour guide found accompanying more than three people will be fined and his/her license suspended. All major historical and biblical sites are closed to the public.

It was the first time I’d cried about Covid’s effects on our tour.

God Wins

During our first trip to Israel in 2000, we hadn’t seen Hezekiah’s Tunnels, and they’d just started the archaeological dig on the City of David. Those two sites and the Petra extension were the main reasons we’d organized the reader tour for 2020. And Covid had cancelled all three. Death counts around the globe were rising. Fear began it strangle hold, and I felt like the enemy against us was winning.

Would Israel close the airport? Could we make it home? Would the U.S. let us in? Would we be quarantined if we made it to the U.S.?

That fear helped me understand what The Mole’s Wife must have experienced as the Assyrian army approached Jerusalem and her husband orchestrated the digging project of Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Every day her husband risked his life by digging through a mountain’s bedrock hundreds of feet below ground. But if he didn’t succeed in creating a tunnel–which connected the Gihon Spring outside the city walls to the well inside the city walls–the whole city would die in a siege.

Ashes to Dancing

I called a meeting that night to tell everyone about our last day’s cancellation and to read aloud The Mole’s Wife (the third short story in The Nameless Ones). After I finished reading, someone pointed out my hubby’s T-shirt from my book, Of Fire and Lions, and the Scripture quoted on the back:

“The God we serve is able to deliver.” Daniel 3:17

Our last day in Jerusalem was a beautiful time for leisurely strolls through the ancient city. With Bibles and/or cameras in hand, we prayerfully focused on deepening our love for God’s people. We spent our final three days in Tel Aviv. No guide. No schedule. We spent that time in self-guided tours to ancient Jaffa and through Israel’s most modern city. Beach walks and wonderful food was the perfect goodbye to a surprising and memorable journey.

On the way to the airport, our bus driver said, “I took one other tour group to the airport this morning. I think you’re our last American tourists in Israel.”

My heart ached a little at the sadness in his voice. “We hope to come back soon,” I told him–and meant it.

Keep watching my blog and newsletter for our next reader tour. We hope to return in the spring of 2026! CLICK HERE to subscribe to my newsletter and never miss “insider” news about my writing and personal photos and news.

For More Information on The Nameless Ones…

Because my “Newsies” (newsletter subscribers) ALWAYS get special perks and insider info on my writing process, they’ll receive a special “TNO sneak-peak newsletter” next Monday (On April Fool’s Day, 4/1/24, no foolin’–one day BEFORE release!). This first chapter peek of The Nameless Ones can be found nowhere else!

So, if you’d like to be the first to read about Solomon’s 700th Wife, and get my exclusive monthly writing/life updates and fun giveaways, be sure to subscribe at: https://mesuandrews.com/#newsletter. You’ll also get a free novella! Enjoy!

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