Writer's Retreat Day 6

So, can I count the words I write in these posts as part of may daily word count?!?! Since I'm the one doing the counting, I might as well.

I didn't get many words on paper yesterday, but I really had fun researching the cities my characters will pass along the way on their trip from Capernaum to Jerusalem. This effort required some real detective skills. It turns out that almost every map I reviewed, whether in a book or on the internet, showed different major roads and had a different mix of cities listed. Many of the maps seemed to show the names of cities as they were called in different centuries on the same map! For instance, one of the cities the characters will stop in over night was called Agrippina on some maps and didn't show up at all on others. In my research I couldn't find this name for a city anywhere -- it seems that an earlier city, Kaukab el-Hawa was renamed Agrippina after a queen many centuries after my desired time. But Kaukab el-Hawa is the name given by the Muslims. After more research I discovered that it was called Kohav by the Israelites, short for Kohav Hayardin which means "Star of the Jordan". It was apparently near the sight where Gideon chased the Midianites! This is probably too much information for those of you who don't get into history or research, but it was almost like a treasure hunt.

For many of the towns I was able to find pictures of ruins and descriptions of the towns from both OT and NT times. I may not use a lot of this research, but it will give me an opportunity to describe some of the sites our travelers saw on their long walks.

Due to some extraneous issues, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed last night and decided to quit early. At 8:00 I watched a quilting video, then I decided to go to bed. My brain was way too full of things, so I ended up getting up a couple of times to read or do more research before I finally called it a night at 11:00.

I slept in until 7 this morning and caught the tail end (last 45 minutes) of the sunrise. No clouds today, so while it was pretty it was less eventful than some of the other sunrises. It made me realize that, while God shines every day, sometimes he can do his most magnificent work when there are clouds in our lives.

Today is the last full day we have and the last working day. I plan to write this morning and spend the afternoon looking at the year and planning out the writing (and quilting/teaching) I want to do from here forward.

Praying you have a wonderful day!