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Show PG Kiwanis Club Hears Talk on Holy Land Area Pleasant Grove Kiwanians, their wives and guests enjoyed en-joyed a dinner meeting at Parks Cafe Saturday evening. The main feature Of the evening ev-ening was a talk by Louis E. Gardner. LaMont Brown was inducted induct-ed into Kiwanis by Merrill N. Warnick. Guests of the club were Mr. and Mrs. J. LeRoy Thorne, Stephen Gardner, Ranae Rawlinson, and Mr. and Mrs. Casey Nesbitt. Mr. Gardner was an adviser ad-viser to the Jordan government govern-ment in 1953 on petroleum exploration. He worked for several months in all parts of the Holy Lands, the Dead Sea Basin and the deserts to the east. He told of the geography and climate of this ancient land, and of the people who lived there. He showed slides and gave word pictures of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and of his ancestoral kinsman, King David. He told of the great cavernous caver-nous unlit Church of the Redeemer Re-deemer built over several hills and with steep steps worn down to mere paths by millions of pilgrams. In some places the walls bear the names or marks of Crusaders Crusad-ers who were the tourists of almost a thousand years ago. He also described and gave the history of the city of Jerusalem, Jer-usalem, of its Holy places, and its countryside where he worked. He mentioned that much of the country had little vegetation and was somewhat similar to Utah Valley, but that the shepherds in the countryside were little different differ-ent now than they were almost al-most 2,000 years ago in the time of Christ. He told of camping out and looking at the deep blue sky studded with millions of stars just as shepherds did thousands thous-ands of years ago. It gave a person a feeling of enormous space and of eternal time because be-cause you could 'see forever." for-ever." Mr. Gardner said that after af-ter you live in the Holy Land awhile you get i- feeling of reverence and you want to iust look and think of how three of the great religions of the world, Hebrew, Christian Chris-tian and Moslem had their birthplaces in this small area and of how all three hold the same city sacred. He pointed out that the three great religions re-ligions have many strong similarities sim-ilarities that far overshadow their differences. Yet, men have long emphasized their small differences and ignored their great similarities to create cre-ate misunderstandings, distrust dis-trust and even conflict. These three religions that teach brotherhood, peace, and submission to God have fought inumerable battles and killed unnumbered men because be-cause of their differences. He suggested that if any of the audience should be fortunate fortun-ate enough to visit the Holy Lands that they first go on t ho guided tours, but that they ,'save time to return alone to some of the places and sit in solitude and silence to think of God, the universe and mankind, man-kind, just as countless Jews, Christians and Moslems have done in the past. |