1st day of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We visited the Baptismal site of Bethany, beyond the Jordan (in Jordan), the church and Monastery of St. John the Baptist, where our Lord was baptized, we celebrated the Blessing of the Waters , met Metropolitan Benedict of Philadelphia and subsequently the Site of Saint Mary the Egyptian and Prophet Elijah’s hill, the place where prophet Elijah ascended to heaven in the ninth century BC and finally we rested in our hotel by the Dead Sea.
