Here is a modern-day picture of the Garden of Gethsemane. The park is pretty small today because it is surrounded by churches and monuments and tourist spots. And because Gethsemane is not as important to most Christians as Golgotha or The Garden Tomb. When my brother toured Jerusalem they didn't even take the tour groups there.
The trees that are in the Garden today are centuries old. And some of them are shoots of trees that have been regenerating for thousands of years.
When olives are harvested for oil, they are gathered and put into large stone basins to be crushed.
BYU owns a press at the Jerusalem Center. This is a group of students who are crushing the olives in the stone basin.
Even though the stone smashes the olives really well, they are not yet olive-oil ready. After the olives are crushed, the mash is gathered into wicker baskets and transferred to a press.
The BYU Center has a more modern press, but this one may have been more like the presses that were used in Jesus' time. The wicker baskets were piled on top of each other under a giant flat stone, and others stones weighed down the lever.
The sheer weight of the stones causes the olive mash to release all of its juice and oil, which oozes out of the baskets and down into another stone basin. When the oil first comes out, this is what it looks like.
After the oil settles for a little while it becomes more transparent. But I love how the process shows how Jesus went through a similar experience in the Garden.
Even though the Bible doesn't write much about what really happened that night, I'm glad for the Book of Mormon and modern-day prophets. I'm glad that God revealed to them the suffering that Jesus experienced so we can understand the Atonement better.
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