Sacrifice Holiday

Last week was a three day holiday in which families who are able buy a lamb or goat to sacrifice in memory of the sacrifice that God provided for Abraham in place of his son.  Some people had bought their sheep months before to fatten it up and others bought it the week before.  We heard increasing sounds of sheep sounds in our neighborhood the week before.  On the first day of the holiday the sheep is sacrificed and then meat is given to the poor, to neighbors, and then cooked up to serve to guests and family who come visiting. 

We wanted to participate, so bought some mutton from the bazaar and I cooked up a mutton soup to serve to any guests who would come over.  In this culture, lots of oil floating on top is yummy, so I tried to make it their way . . . see below.

Beginning on the second day of the holiday, people go around visiting each other's houses and at each place they are served some meat along with a big spread of nuts, fruit, cookies and cakes.  Our spread in our newly decorated guest room is in the picture below.

Usually most of the visiting is done by men during these three days because the ladies are busy cooking the meat, making tea, and washing dishes.  Jason went out on the second day to visit some of our neighbors and then we were grateful that a lot of them reciprocated and showed up later that morning.  In the afternoon, I was surprised when some of the neighbor ladies I had not met before showed up for a visit.  They invited me to go with them to visit some of the other ladies, so I picked up Anna and Alia grabbed the hand of one of the teenage girls and off we went with them.  These ladies were so jovial and a lot of fun.  At the second house we went to, suddenly a dust storm started.  The beautiful spread of nuts and candies began to get covered in dust coming in their window covered only by a curtain.  The ladies, obviously having lived through a lot of these, just laughed about it and got out a dust rag and began helping to dust off the table cloth on the floor.  It was a good reminder to me that laughing about the dust is better than getting stressed about it (which tends to be what happens when a dust storm is going on and I can literally see dust gathering as it comes through the cracks in our windows).  After visiting two houses with the ladies, the wind and dust had become so strong I could not keep my burqa on and hang on to Anna and Alia so I told the ladies I would try to visit more the next day.

However, on day three, we awakened to a huge snowstorm which dropped about 10 inches of snow, so no visitors that day!  There is a saying here though that the men's holiday is 3 days, but the ladies holiday is the next 30 days after that.  So a few days later I headed over to another neighbor to give her holiday greetings and I hope to make the most of these next few weeks when ladies are still visiting more than usual to go meet some more of my neighbors. 

And in the midst of it all, the question has come several times, "Did you sacrifice a sheep?"  opening the way to talk about our Perfect Sacrifice who is alive now and seated at our Father's right hand, making it no longer necessary to offer an animal sacrifice.

I wish I had pictures with some of the ladies, but whipping out my camera with them screams, "I am a foreigner!" and is not conducive to knocking down differences and presuppositions they have of me as an American, so . . . as occasions are appropriate, I hope to get some pictures of people, but just wanted to let you know why there are few pictures of our local friends here.