Easter -- What a reason to Celebrate!

April 13
Happy Easter everyone! I am so excited and thankful my Savior has risen!!! What a lot we have to celebrate. What good news we have to share with everyone. I was praising God in prayer the other night and realized how bad I have been at celebrating what my Lord did. I have reason to rejoice everyday and especially as we remember at Easter time that we are forgiven. Christ has given us victory! I have hope because He has given me eternal life – He has given me life. How that makes me want to praise Him and say thank you God. We need to live as saved Christians. We need to live as excited Christians. Jesus has done the work for us now we need to live it and share it. We need to shout it to the world. Jesus loves you!

It has only rained two Sundays mornings in the two years we have lived in Uganda, and this Easter was one of them. When it rains here no one goes out they just wait for the rain to stop, so not many people make it to church. And when you are at church and it rains on the steel roof no one can hear. I decided while sitting in our church Easter morning, getting dripped on through the wholes in the roof and not being able to hear myself sing let alone anyone else, that satan was trying to stop our Easter celebration. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. No way, we already have the victory. Jesus has risen and I will rejoice!

We did have a nice service. Our family sang “God’s not dead, no He is alive” for our special number. And they had a baby showering for Luka. A few people brought him gifts as they sung, “This is the Luka that the Lord has made” (to the song “This is the day”). He got eggs, oranges, laundry soap, peanuts, and money. It was very nice of everyone. Oh, just a side note, the rains brought out flying ants so during church a couple kids were gathering them and eating them -- alive. Yummy. We must live in Africa.

In the afternoon we had an Easter dinner with our team, some of our friends. We wanted to take this opportunity to share Jesus with our friends. I prayed all week about it. I didn’t know how to go about doing this dinner. Who to have, when to have it, and what to have (I can’t feed an army, they can’t leave their work at just any time, and they don’t eat certain things). I didn’t want my worries to stop us from sharing the good news with out friends, so I prayed against satan’s interferences and asked Jesus to lead the way. And of course we prayed for God to prepare the way for the gospel to be shared.

I was excited. Everyone came Sunday and we had a nice time fellowshipping. We did an Easter egg hunt with the kids, ate supper, and shared with them why we celebrate Easter. Josh told the story with the resurrection eggs. Each egg has an object in that tells part of the story. Everyone seemed to listen closely. Then we sang a couple songs. I can’t imagine what they must think. All I know is it has to be the Holy Spirit’s work to understand that story for the first time. Really, if someone told you they were celebrating a man that rose from the dead what would you think? I don’t know what God did in their lives Sunday but I know a seed was planted. We have given Bibles (in their language) to them a few months ago so I pray this makes them want to read more. I am so thankful that this Easter we were able to tell our friends about Jesus! That is what it is all about.