BELLINGHAM — Ken and Kathy Tate have a packed tourist agenda next week on their visit to several sacred sites in Israel.

The longtime followers of the Baha’i faith will spend several days bumping along in tour buses, strolling through sacred places around Mount Carmel and chatting with Baha’is from around the world who flock to the Baha’i world headquarters.

But amid all the activity, it’s moments of sublime stillness that have drawn the Tates to their second pilgrimage in 10 years.

The last time they visited, they said, they found themselves in tears at the sight of the lush gardens around the headquarters, laid out by the founding prophet’s great-grandson to represent the faith’s ideal of the unity of mankind. And they visited the home where the founding prophet, Baha’u’llah, wrote parts of the Baha’i holy book.

“It’s a chance to connect on a physical basis with the spiritual reality of the faith,” Ken said.

“I felt this incredible sense of a power source nearby,” he said, describing his last visit. “It was almost as if I felt the earth buzzing.”

The itinerary includes several places significant in the life of Baha’u’llah, a prophet from Persia who was exiled in the area with his family from 1868 to 1892. And many of the prison cells, homes and farms — where the prophet thought and wrote about the faith’s central tenets of unity and equality — are still much as they were then, the Tates said.

They’ll also pray at Shrine of Baha’u’llah, where the prophet was interred.

“You’re reciting the words at the burial place of the person who wrote them,” Ken said.

Pilgrimages like this are asked of all Baha’is who can make them, Kathy said. This year, about a dozen Whatcom County residents have traveled to Israel to pray and meditate in the shrines, visit the terraced gardens and walk the same streets as the faith’s founding prophet just over a century ago.

Pilgrimages, or visits to holy places, are an important part of several faiths, including Christianity and Islam. Every ablebodied Muslim is obliged to visit Mecca for the Hajj, which happens sometime between November and January. And millions of Christians have flocked to places of deep spiritual significance to that faith.

Baha’is can’t apply to go on a pilgrimage more than once every five years, and the waiting list for Americans is about five years long, say the Tates, who are also taking Kathy’s two grown children on the trip.

Their trip coincides with one planned by Ellen Dodson and her family, of Nugents Corner. Dodson has never been on a full pilgrimage but has visited some of the sacred sites on shorter trips.

“I’m a pretty feet-on-theground kind of person,” Dodson said. On her last visit, she wasn’t expecting to feel anything more than a sense of interest in visiting the places with such historical significance to her faith.

Instead, she said, she was surprised to feel an overwhelming sense of peace and “the presence and connection with God.”

Whether the feeling was the result of something metaphysical or just her own powers of focus and concentration, she doesn’t know. But she can still capture the feeling years later in quiet moments.

“I’m looking forward to this booster shot,” said Ellen, who is traveling with her mother, Karen Dodson, 74, and her nieces, Dora, 16, Tamara, 14, and Abigail, 12.

The girls have been working in the family grocery store and saving as much as they can to pay for the trip, Ellen said.