Easter Celebrations

God gave us a very meaningful celebration of Jesus's death and resurrection this year!  One of the traditions in the culture here is to put henna on your hands for holidays.  Alia has seen it on the hands of her little local friends and has been asking when she gets to put some on her hands.  So for the week before Easter, we put some henna designs on our hands that told the Easter story. 

So the little lines on the tips of our fingers stand for the nails in Jesus' hands and feet.  Lower on our fingers are the drops of blood that Jesus shed when he was crucified.  Then on our palms are three suns, for the three days he was in the grave, and the third sun has rays radiating showing that he arose!  The zig zag line below our thumb tells of the curtain in the temple that was torn when Jesus died, showing that He had victory over the sin that had separated us from God and now because of Jesus we can boldly come before God's throne of grace. 

I hoped to be able to share the story with friends here, but due to the girls being sick that week, we did not get out much, however we were able to tell the story to our house helper and I pray too that as Alia heard the story several times, the wonder of it is beginning to touch her little heart!

The girls got some cute dresses from their Grammy so we seized the opportunity for some pictures out in our yard that is turning green!

Our team planned a picnic in a local park here for Easter morning, so Alia and I made some cupcakes to take along.  Alia is beginning to love to help in the kitchen!

I frosted the cupcakes and Alia put the sprinkles on!

At the park we found a nice secluded area and had a short acting out of the resurrection morning.  Then we worshipped in song with guitar.  What an amazing thing to lift our voices in song in this place declaring our Savior's resurrection and singing "Our God reigns!!"  Yes, even in this place, He reigns, though few here even know or acknowledge it!  

My thoughts then turned to my sweet little girls sitting here and thinking about what their life is going to be like growing up here . . . or even when they get older what this world may be like.  But then I thought of the song, "Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.  Because He lives, all fear is gone.  Because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives."  I don't know what lies ahead for them, but I know that the One who is daily with me is alive and will daily be with them in whatever kind of situation they will be in.

Following our worship, Alia, with two other little girls had an Easter egg hunt!

We enjoyed a picnic together and then Jason joined in a game of dodge ball!

 . . . while Alia went to pick some flowers!

For our celebration as a family . . .

 . . . we made a little Easter scene for the week before starting on Palm Sunday, and had our family Bible time using this.  I got some of the idea from a book by Noel Piper and made the little mountain and grave out of dough.

On Palm Sunday:  we had a branch and told the story of the triumphal entry.

Monday:  a towel, and the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet

Tuesday:  a piece of bread, and the story of the Last Supper

Wednesday: an angel (out of pipe cleaners), and the story of Jesus praying in the garden

Thursday: a soldier and a branch with thorns on it and the story of how Jesus was beaten and a crown of thorns put on his head.

Friday: a nail, and the story of Jesus being nailed to the cross.  We wrapped him in a paper towel and put him in the tomb.

Saturday:  just waiting and talking about the sadness of Jesus' friends because he was dead

Sunday morning: we took Jesus out of the tomb and had him standing on the mountain for Alia to find --alive again!

Each day we retold the stories from the previous day and then added on the story for that day.  It was so neat to see Alia learning the stories, but also so good for Jason and me to be meditating on these stories of our Savior together throughout the week!  This year we did not have any local friends that we shared the stories with using this little scene, but I pray that as this becomes a tradition of our family, it is something that is pretty much reproducible for people here (except for maybe the pipe cleaners! :-) ) to be able to tell the story to their families.