At the core of our Family and Friends trip to Israel are the parents and relatives who have children attending The Master’s University IBEX campus. However, we also open the trip to those who may have no direct connection to IBEX or TMU. We invite you to join field instructor Dr. Michael Grisanti for a ten-day trip to Israel in March. The Family & Friends Program is arranged for you to visit Israel, explore the historical and biblical sites, and be introduced to our IBEX program. Opportunities for several meals and fun times together with the students have been arranged. Some sites of significance on the itinerary include the Sea of Galilee and the Galilee region, the Shephelah, the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and of course, Jerusalem.
Our trip is not a slow-moving tourist trip but a fun and engaging study trip, emphasizing how the land of Israel connects with the Bible. We desire to help each participant better understand the land of the Bible through our time together. We will provide a pre-trip orientation packet and field notes to help you follow the instruction. We will do a fair bit of walking to several sites and ride the bus to other stops.
To learn more about the fall trip to Israel, click here.
| Date | Departure location | Destination location | Dep time | Arr time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 10 | Los Angeles (LAX) | Instanbul (IST) | 6:25pm | 6:25pm+ |
| March 11 | Instanbul (IST) | Tel Aviv (TLV) | 8:30pm | 9:40pm |
| March 19 | Tel Aviv (TLV) | Instanbul (IST) | 8:40am | 12:05pm |
| March 19 | Instanbul (IST) | Los Angeles (LAX) | 1:50pm | 5:45pm |
Be sure to direct any questions about flights to our travel agent Craig Dunning at
1. Please complete the application form legibly. This will help ensure that we have accurate information and don’t incorrectly read someone’s handwriting. When we submit your personal information (full name, passport number, and expiration date) to the airline, the information we submit must EXACTLY MATCH what appears on your passport. Otherwise, you will face challenges when you check-in at the US and Israeli airports and likely have to pay some surcharge.
Be sure to sign and initial the marked places and give the date you completed the form. You must answer whether you are purchasing travel insurance and provide your initials on page 13 of the registration form. You can scan the form and email it to or mail it to the IBEX Office (see below address).
2. Along with your registration, send a very clear and readable color scan of your passport face page (email a scan or mail the printed page). This helps Dr. Grisanti start to connect faces with names before the trip begins. It also is a kind of insurance. If anyone loses their passport (perish the thought!), the face page is a great starting point for getting that fixed ASAP in Israel. If you don’t have your passport when you submit your registration form, make sure to email or mail it to the IBEX office by January 11.
3. To pay by credit card, please use our secure payment portal. Put “2023 Family and Friends Trip” in the notes area.
4. To pay by check, please make the check payable to The Master’s University and mail or deliver it to the IBEX Office.
Jessy Heinzen IBEX Secretary—Box #16 The Master’s University 21726 Placerita Canyon Road Santa Clarita, CA 91321
5. In addition to important trip information, the trip application from The Master’s University includes a health information section. By providing us your health insurance information and key aspects of your health, you enable us to work with medical professionals in Israel in the event that you had some health issue while in Israel. This information is not shared with anyone outside of Dr. Grisanti. It gives Dr. G. some basic information to have on hand in case a person has an accident and a doctor needs to understand the bigger health picture as well as insurance coverage information. I don’t know that I have ever had to look at the trip applications during a trip. Regardless, it is important to be prepared (I am an old boy Scout—Eagle Scout). Please submit that completed application with your trip deposit by November 8, 2022 by email or mail.
The last pages of the trip application involve a section entitled “Informed consent, acknowledgment or risk, & assumption of liability.” It covers the expected legal concerns to protect TMU as the sponsor of a trip like this. Every Israel trip has something like this in the material they provide to their participants. Rest assured, we are not expecting something bad to happen. After the end of those points, there is a place for you to sign the document. You need to submit this trip application along with your trip deposit. Please submit that completed application with your trip deposit by November 8, 2022, by email or mail.
6. For any questions regarding logistical and payment details, please contact Jessy Heinzen in the IBEX Office, 661-362-2616 or .
Dr. Michael Grisanti is Professor of Old Testament at The Master’s Seminary (since 1997). He has been actively involved in ministries around the world, which have brought him to Albania, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Grisanti has contributed to the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, the Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook, and the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. He wrote the commentary on Deuteronomy in the revised edition of the Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan) and was one of three authors for The World and The Word (B&H). He also wrote the Deuteronomy commentary in the recently published The Baker Illustrated Bible Background Commentary and is working on a History of Ancient Israel with Dr. Todd Bolen (TMU professor). Dr. Grisanti loves the land of Israel and has been there over 30 times to study the land and lead study trips. Seven of his eight children have studied on the IBEX campus.
$3,995 per person (credit card and check payments) – Secure Payment Portal
$2,495 per person (credit card and check payments) – Secure Payment Portal for credit card payments. Mail checks to the address for the IBEX office given below.
Put “2023 Family and Friends Israel trip” in the comments section.
*Refer to the trip application for more information about the land-only price.
Without exceptions, a current passport is required and must not expire until six months after our return date. If you don’t already have a valid passport or have one that will expire less than six months after our return date. Please apply immediately, as it may take several weeks to process. Don’t delay in applying for your passport. A visa, however, is not required.
As of now, there are no required vaccines and not pre-trip COVID testing for this trip.
After the trip roster is settled, Dr. Grisanti will email a file that provides guidance on what to bring and what to expect for the weather.
You can contact our travel agent (his contact info is found above and on the trip application) if you wish to make other arrangements. You are also free to use your agent or book your flight. We generally discourage travel to Israel apart from the group due to potential scheduling conflicts**. If you travel on your own to Israel, the land-only cost of the trip is $2,495.00 per person (credit card and check payments).
However, we cannot arrange ground transportation or hotels for alternative travel arrangements if your flight schedule does not closely match that of the Family and Friends group or your flight’s arrival in Tel Aviv is delayed for some reason. You will need to BE SURE you arrive before the group and depart after the group departs if you want to ride on the bus from or to the airport. You can also arrive a day(s) before or depart after the trip if preferred. If so, you can meet us at the Ben Gurion airport at the time of our arrival or arrange your transportation to the Moshav, where the IBEX campus is located. If needed, Dr. Grisanti will provide the address of the Moshav closer to the departure date. If you arrive before or depart after the Family and Friends trip, of course, you must cover your housing and transportation costs.
Itinerary details are provided on this website, so you can make accurate flight plans if you choose to make your flight arrangements.
Rest assured that the IBEX Office does not want to put you in harm’s way. We won’t let the IBEX students go to Israel if we are convinced it is not safe, and we won’t pull the trigger on the Family and Friends trip (mid-January) if we have any significant concerns. We don’t go near Gaza during our trip, we don’t hang around border crossings, and we don’t match the profile that terrorists pursue (people in uniform).
In every part of the world, we cannot avoid random events over which we have no control. Nevertheless, Israel is an amazingly safe place to be. Dr. Grisanti has been to Israel over 30 times and has never felt unsafe. Events like those that took place during the late spring and summer are not commonplace at all. In the end, we trust God’s providence, and we are in continuous communication with people who know the status of travel in Israel.
As the trip roster gets settled, Dr. Grisanti will send by email several study suggestions to the group participants directly. These resources will help those interested in laying some groundwork for what we hope to learn during our time together. Once the final payment deadline passes, Dr. Grisanti will mail to each person participating in the Family and Friends trip a copy of a great resource, the Satellite Bible Atlas. You will carry that around during the trip, esp. on the days we are traveling outside of Jerusalem. He will also provide links to other helpful resources.
This question deserves more time than I (Dr. G) can give in this setting. The short answer is “No.” As the trip leader, this is my decision. On the one hand, having a full schedule and limited time on the day when it might have happened is a genuine factor. On the other hand, I firmly believe that the NT presents baptism as a local church ordinance, to be witnessed by the brethren who will hold that person accountable for pursuing the life proclaimed by their baptism. To be clear, I am not condemning other trip leaders (that include friends of mine) who perform baptisms during their trips. I must live by my biblical beliefs and conscience.
This has only happened once (2021 because Israel did not open her borders). Nevertheless, if we decide to cancel the F&F trip before the final payment is due (Jan. 18), we will fully refund the deposit or all or most of what a person has paid. Because we committed to a certain number of airline seats, those who are part of our group reservation my not receive back $200.00 of what they paid if the airline requires that of us.
However, after the full payment is made and that money goes to the airline and the land vendors, the money is out of our hands. If things get so bad at that point that we make the painful decision to cancel the trip (which I don’t at all expect), we have no access to that money**. That is where the travel insurance kicks in. That is why we are encouraging concerned people to buy travel insurance–making sure they understand the parameters of the policy they choose.
There have been times that a spring snowstorm on the east coast has complicated flight connections. In March 2018, a few people arrived a day or two late because of being stuck somewhere in the US due to canceled flights. In that situation, if a person decides to call off the trip for themselves because bad weather will delay their arrival by a couple of days, that is their choice. However, in that instance, keep in mind that TMU will have no money to refund (already sent to air and land vendors), and most travel insurances will not refund trip costs because choosing not to travel does not serve as one of the conditions for refunding trip expenses. That rarely happens, but we need to emphasize that point in light of our 2018 experience.
Short answer—I don’t expect that to happen.
Longer answer—in case I am surprised!!
In March 2020, we made it to Israel just as people were talking about COVID, and we were one of the last trips to depart the country before Israel shut down. The normal policy for airlines and travel insurance companies was not to refund travel that was canceled by “an act of God”. Because of the widespread impact of COVID, all airlines and most travel insurance companies issued refunds.
Every indication is that COVID will be less of a problem, and vaccines are available if required. Ultimately, we do not know for sure what the near future holds. I am trusting for the best and planning accordingly. I cannot and am not promising that all funds will be refunded. We will have to take things as they come. However, if it becomes apparent that we need to refund the money paid to TMU (before we send money to our vendors), we will refund it. After that, it will depend on the decisions made by airlines and travel insurance companies.
We will look at the situation very carefully before the money is sent off to the air and land vendors. I am very, very hopeful/confident that we will be able to do this trip. My contacts in the travel world, esp. in Israel, have the same idea. Regardless, we will seek to be wise. If we cancel the trip before we send the money to the air and land vendors (after the main payment is due), we will refund that deposit and trip payments. I would encourage you, if you are interested in traveling with me to Israel in March, to sign up and make plans. Rest assured, I will draw on the wisdom of others when we approach the time to make a final decision.
Since travel insurance does not represent health insurance, you need to contact your health insurance provider to see if they will cover medical expenses during your trip to Israel. Several insurance policies cover “out of network” expenses and reimburse you for them (or a certain percentage of that expense) after you return home and submit your receipts.
