Easter Week-end

Easter week-end is quite different here than back at home. There are no chocolate bunnies in the stores, colouring contests or Easter egg hunts. Instead, the entire week before Easter is a holiday and there are lots of parades, parties and loud music!
While the parades look very "religious" with statues of Jesus, various saints, and of course Mary, most people view the holiday as a chance to have a good time.

Daily these parades marched by our house or on the other main roads. On Good Friday, people spent all day making a long "rug" down the main road in town. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures, but it was a real work of art! The rug ran down the middle of the street for a long way, and it was made out of coloured sawdust and pineneedles. Using forms or large stencils, they would make designs or pictures using the coloured sawdust.
After all their hard work, a large procession came marching through with lots of candles and various statues. Sadly, the statues of Jesus are always of His death. There was never any parade to celebrate the wonderful resurrection of Christ.
Wilf spoke this morning on Colossians 3:1-
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God."
How we pray that people will know the joy of being rasied with Christ!



In contrast to all the visiting and partying going on around us, our Easter week-end was quite quiet. The kids have some new favorite activities!
Playing the game of "war" :) with Nico and Ellen up in the mango tree!

One of the "fads" that Nate picked up at school was playing with a trompo or top.

The boys at school can do all sorts of neat tricks with these things and Brad and Nate have spent hours trying to master it. The first trick is getting it to spin at all! Then you can work up to having it spin on your hand.

Another "fad" the kids picked up at school is playing with little round trading cards. You can collect these cards from little chip bags, winning them from a friend, or scrounging for them around town!

The boys have had a lot of fun playing with these! The tramp seems to be a favorite spot to play.

Kristen is not into trompos or trading cards. The other Sunday we went to visit a family from church in their new home. The eldest daughter was doing the family washing in the pila (or sink) that everyone has here. She was so fascinated by the process, that she convinced Ellen it would be fun to do some laundry in our pila!

She had a great time, but I think in the end she is pretty thankful for our washing machine.

And Ryan will play with anything! He spent a long time playing with this small, green orange that had fallen off of one of our trees. Who needs expensive toys?? :)

Early tomorrow morning we are heading to the city. We need to do some paper work, Wilf has to visit the dentist again, and our cupboards here are a bit bare! We also hope to take a two night vacation to see a little bit more of this country we are living in.

Please pray for us as the violence in the city has really increased. A lady we know in the city was recently threatened with some extortion death threats, and had to move out of her home. Lia and Nico had their tire slashed (as a robbery set-up), and saw a shootout between the police and a gang. The Pastor of the Presbyterian church was held up at gun point while paying a bill at his bank.

While all these events do worry us, we are learning that trusting Christ for "all things" includes trusting Him in these matters as well.