Happy Easter

Now I can finally say, “Happy Easter, Jesus has risen!  He has risen indeed!!”  We had our big celebration this last Sunday.

my girls on Easter Sunday

it was a great service

I would love to have a nice lovely family picture, where everyone stands still and smiles, but we are just NOT the stand in one place type of family.  Michael trying to escape and Joy pulling on our necks.

Gardner preached, a few of us women did a reader’s theater, amazing worship and at the end we set up tables and had a giant feast together.  We all left feeling God had blessed us with His presence, filled our hearts as we worshiped Him and remembered His sacrifice for us.  I loved listening to all the languages that surrounded me.  I thought, “what a small glimpse of what heaven will be like, with all peoples coming before HIM”.  One man was in the back translating into Arabic, another sat behind me translating into Farsi, Gardner preached in Russian, we sang in Ukrainian, English, Russian and Arabic.  What a morning of praise. (other nationalities represented were German, Kazakh, Tatar, American, Canadian, Iran, Syria, Egyptian, Ukrainian, Russian, quite the mix!)

 

The next day we woke up and met in the forest for a picnic, a huge group showed up.  Gardner bbq meat, I taught a group of Chinese students how to play baseball, Ryan and Andrew played volleyball with some Turk men, Ukrainian, Chinese and Iranian students, kids ran all around us and we got to meet and play with a group of refugees from Eastern Ukraine (people who have fled from the war).

 

We were exhausted when we layed down last night.  After we got all the kids washed and in bed, I said, “lets just watch a movie”.  I didn’t realize it was soooo long, thinking it was still early enough.  We went to bed too late but that isn’t all!  Right as we were dosing off, I hear this little voice.  “Mommy, I threw up in my bed.”

Unfortunately, I was super cuddly.  My reaction was more of the “oh no”, you ok?  I climb up into their boys’ loft bed (Matthew and Michael share a bed) and wake up Matthew.  “Matthew, you better get out of bed quick.  You are about to roll in barf.”  He wakes up, is inches from rolling into it and says, “How did I miss this?”  Is was kind of funny to watch.

Anyway this morning, we got them all off to school and went out looking for good spots for our church’s first baptism.  We found the best spot just 15-20min from our house, had never even known it was there.  We’ve decided to have our Sunday morning worship service there on the river and then have the baptisms, followed by a whopping picnic/feast/bbq and volleyball.  You can even rent paddle boats right there for $2 and hour.  If you live nearby and are interested it will be April 26th at 11am.  Those of you in the states, please pray for good weather, God to bless us, His presence to be powerfully felt by all.

I posted a home service page if you are interested in more details of our summer in the states.