While Mingway is in Townshend, I will fly to Israel for a 3-day visit at Baha’i World Center located at Haifa and Akko areas.

7-22-2012
I am waiting at Prague airport to check in and fly to Tel Aviv and then to Haifa.

Life is such a mystery unfolding each day and we don’t know for sure to where it will lead us. It never stops amazing me that I and my whole family would one day come to visit the Holy Land as pilgrims. Growing up in China as atheist, finding God that is believable to me via a Muslim classmate in Prague, then in Rolla Missouri joining Christian church and finally finding my heart desire in Baha’i Faith, the journey traversed half the world and involved more than 15 years of search. We had many aspirations and expectations from life when we were young, many (almost all) proved to be, if not false, at least misperceptions about ourselves and about life. One thing we realized as life proceeding, it is in relation to God that the value of all things is evaluated and determined. At the end of 2007, our whole family came to Haifa Israel as pilgrims for the first time, also the last time as family, which was, in my opinion, our consummate achievement we, as a family, could ever attain.

2008 in Haifa

7-22-2012 evening
I landed in Tel Aviv this afternoon and took sherut to Haifa this evening. The street (Ben Gurion) I am staying at is right in front of Baha'i Garden on Mount Carmel. The Shrine of the Bab and the terraces are luminous through dark background, which is true in both literal and symbolic sense. It’s hard to believe I am here in this land again, onto which so many historical stories happened and recorded, so many prophecies had been made, so many hopes had been and still be placed and through which all prophecies have been fulfilled, even though not been recognized by the still sleepy populace yet.

This is the Holy and mystic Land.

07-23-2012
I visited the Baha’i Garden in Haifa and prayed in the Shrine of The Bab.

The Shrine of The Bab

To say the Garden is beautiful does not do justice about the Garden. It’s beautiful beyond description (my description at least).

Beautiful is only part of the characteristics of the Garden and the Shrine, important as it is, it’s not the essence of it. It is like a lamp, the beautiful design of its outward structure is not the essence of the lamp. It is the light that shines through the lamp which makes the lamp luminous and truly beautiful. The same is true about the Baha’i Gardens. Here in Israel, the land is basically desert or semi-desert, some spotted greenery, but mainly yellowish outlook, especially in hot summer sun. And yet out of this desert there appears the most wonderful, the most green and the most shining Garden on the ancient Mount Carmel. When walking on the terraces, a water stream follows every step I took, the sound of which is like a music that makes my walk a dance. Everywhere I look, I can see and feel the spirit shines through every leaf, every flower, every physical structure and every human face. There is inner happiness reflecting from all of them. The Gardens and the Shrines, to the Baha'is, are the symbol and the beginning of the reality of “The Kingdom of God” on earth as promised ages ago.