BYU - Jerusalem

If you've ever wondered what the BYU Jerusalem Center looks like, now is your chance to get a peek.

View of the front gate and sign. That gate off to the left a little bit is where you enter the school ground. They have guards there 24/7 who have to let you in.

Once you're in the gate, you walk to the left down a sidewalk, and come to the front entryway.

This is a side-view looking back at that gate/front door.

As you walk through the front entryway, there are little fountains on both sides.

When you come in the front door, you're actually on the 8th floor. It's basically a huge lobby area. In this picture, the front door is about half-way down on the left. The doors that you see open on the right go into the auditorium where we have sacrament meeting.

This is taken from where we sit in the auditorium, but it's an awful picture. I don't know how to do it any better, taking it into the light. There are never any lights on inside the auditorium, because it is so lit-up by the natural light coming in through the windows. These ceiling-to-floor windows wrap around on both sides, too. It's hard to do it justice in a picture, but I thought I would at least attempt to capture the view we have through sacrament meeting (see the little chairs up front on the right? That's where the branch presidency and the speakers sit). I told my mom it's like taking a picture of the Grand Canyon - it may be completely breathtaking in person, but in a picture....mmm, not so much. But you get the idea.

This is the same auditorium, but taken from the stage. Notice the beautiful pipe organ in the center. It has over 3,000 pipes, but you can't see most of them. It was built in Denmark, and it's supposedly one of the finest organs in the Middle East.

A picture of a sunset taken from the parking lot.

The Jerusalem Center is huge. Besides what I've posted here, there are seven more floors. The two just beneath the one I've shown include a cafeteria, a forum for large classes, several smaller classrooms, a gymnasium, and a library. The rest of the floors are dormitories for the students, service couples, and the professors.