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  In 1880 sixteen year old Israeli Jacob Eliahu and a friend skipped school to swim the full length of a subterranean channel discovered in 1838 by the American biblical scholar Edward Robinson.  His friend, out of breath, gave up before finishing, but Jacob continued on and by chance discovered ancient letters cut into the rock on the eastern side of the tunnel 19 feet from the Pool of Siloam. Jacob told Conrad Schick, the headmaster of his London Jewish Society sponsored mission school, about his discovery.  Schick then verified it was indeed an ancient Hebrew inscription left there by King Hezekiah’s workmen while excavating the tunnel to bring water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam during a time when Assyrian King Sennacherib was preparing to siege the city of Jerusalem, circa 701 BC.

    Horatio Spafford was a Chicago attorney and real estate investor who lost a fortune in the great fire of 1871.  He thought a vacation would help his family and sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him on a ship to England. The ship tragically sunk killing 200 people including all of the Spafford daughters.  Anna somehow survived and sent a telegram to Horatio that began: “Saved alone. What shall I do?”

    While crossing the Atlantic to console Anna, these words of comfort and hope came into Horatio’s heart and mind: “When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know It is well, it is well with my soul.”

    Anna gave birth to three more children; Horatio, Bertha, and Grace.  Horatio died from scarlet fever in 1880.

    In August 1881 the Spaffords moved to Jerusalem to dedicate their lives to charitable work providing aid, medical care, and food to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.  With a group of fellow believers they established the American Colony.

    In Jerusalem the Spaffords adopted a talented, multilingual teenager named Jacob Eliahu born in Ramallah, the son of Sephardic Jews from Turkey, whom they met through networks of the London Jewish Society, the sponsors of Jacob’s school.