Wonderful Easter in Honduras

 We had one of the best Easter's ever and it was in Honduras. I wasn't sure how much it would feel like Easter because of being in another country and not knowing if any traditions would still be celebrated. Things all came together at the last minute. I brought down a few toys to hide for the boys to find in their Easter baskets (bags) hiding around our temporary housing. They had a great time searching for them and eventually found them tied to a tree and buried in a bush. Then we were off to church with the missionary families. Bryan was on call in the hospital/ER and was tending to people off and on all day but was able to enjoy church with our family. They had a guest speaker who is here with a mission group from Tennessee and he told a very powerful story relating to Jesus' scars that remind us of his sacrifice for us. The missionaries have a tradition here of putting flowers on a woven cross as a symbol of the life that is found from the cross of Jesus. Everyone enjoyed doing this and seeing the beautiful transformation of the brown cross to one full of life and color.

 After church we shared a meal with our sponsor family, Rimas and Abby Miknaitis and their 2 kids. I prepared au gratin potatoes and ham and they were delicious. I will definitely be making them again in the U.S. I have a tradition of making carrot cake for Easter. I love it but eat too much of it if I make it more often. The carrot cake was an effort of love by many people. It is not easy to get all of the ingredients or items necessary to make a cake here so many people came together to make this happen. I had most of the ingredients but got cream cheese and powdered sugar from the Tumlison family. I needed additional powdered sugar which I got from the visiting Woodley family. I also didn't have a hand mixer which I borrowed from another neighbor family. I eventually found two round cake pans (with Bryan's help) after borrowing one from that neighbor. I was happy to share the cake with all of the people that helped. There was more than enough cake to go around and I think everyone enjoyed the reward for their contribution.

 

After lunch 5 of the families here had planned an Easter egg hunt for our kids. There were 10 kids and after adding up everyone's contributions we had 130 stuffed plastic eggs. This made for quite a nice egg hunt. The kids all had a blast finding eggs and enjoying the treats and toys after opening them. Then in the evening, our friends the Tumlisons invited everyone over for a bonfire. This was a nice treat because the temperature was not too hot to enjoy it. We sat around and went through the Resurrection Eggs and talked about the Easter story with the kids. There was also some singing around the fire and Jaden kept requesting more songs although he didn't know any of the words to sing along. We had an amazing day filled with fun and friends, celebrating a holiday that means so much to us.