Our Easter Weekend

I realize that it has been a VERY LONG time since I (Ronnie) posted a blog.  I am afraid that Facebook has become my way of communicating with the rest of the world.  And that means that our blog has suffered.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't three or four blog posts that are not quite finished and are waiting to be posted.  For now though I thought I would write about our Easter weekend here in Obulle.
I have gathered from social media that Easter is the time to take beautiful family photos, but that is just one more thing we didn't do here - that and hunt for easter eggs, or give baskets of candy.  Instead it was truly centered about the celebration of our resurrected Savior which I appreciate.
On Friday Colin was asked to preach in a sister church about an hour away.  He wanted to do a very basic story of Easter.  He used my children's church material (picture cards) and storied through the creation story, then jumped to Jesus' birth, ministry and finally the Easter story.  He went with Dan and when they arrived at the church, only 5 adults were there.  About three times as many kids were there as well.  Colin had everyone sit in a circle and using the pictures he told the stories.  I later talked to Dan about how it went and his face just lit up!  He said it was one of the best teachings he had ever been a part of.  He loved it!  And he said that the rest of the people there also loved it.  Sometimes it seems like we need to "go deep" with folks here, but I am reminded time and time again that the more simple you make learning about the Bible, the better it is received.  The "deep" stuff will come, but for most, the simpler the better.
I stayed at our church here in Obulle.  There was a small group and it was nice.  I didn't do anything with the kids only because there were not that many.  Maybe around 20 kids, which is a very small group for me.  My friend Jennifer acted (or did a "drama") like she was Mary on Good Friday and told the story of Jesus coming into the city on Palm Sunday all they way up to him being crucified on Good Friday.
On Saturday we were all supposed to go door to door and talk to the community.  My ladies Bible study group had talked about going out to a few homes and practice their stories.  They picked four homes to visit.  I went and bought some soap, sugar and tea to give as gifts to the homes we went to.  Colin, Emma and a pastor that was visiting our village, went to homes where there were families that we not coming to church or that were unbelievers.  You can read about Colin's visiting in the blog just before this one.  The ladies and I had a great time and I feel like it was refreshing for these women to go and talk about Christ to their neighbors.  This was a "foot in the door" opportunity for us and I think we will go back as a group.  We even saw one of the ladies in church the next day!
On Sunday the church was full!  We ran out of benches for everyone to sit on.  After Jennifer did her "drama" I thought that I would pick up where she left off.  So I sort of interrupted the beginning of the service by running in to tell everyone that the tomb that they put Jesus in was empty.  I pretended to be Salome.  It was fun because I could see everyone's faces and lots of the congregation was really getting into it.  Then I took all the kids out for children's church.  About 70 children showed up.  We used the picture cards to tell the story of Passion week.  It was really great.  Then I gave an invitation and had 6 children give their lives to Christ!  While we were talking and praying one little boy (about 9 or 10 years old) who gave his life to Christ had tears steaming down his little face.  It was truly wonderful!  They then all got to color and I brought cookies for everyone to have.
After church was over I ran home and started cooking lunch.  We invited Dan and his family to join us and Rose requested that we have pizza for lunch.  I'd cooked pizza a few weeks back and had made too much for our family to eat so I took it to Rose and Dan's and they loved it!  So that is why Rose wanted pizza for Easter lunch.  How could I say no?!
So we had an Italian style lunch with pizza and spaghetti.  Then I made two huge bowls of popcorn to finish the day off.  It was fun and well worth all the work.  We hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend as well!