Full Bloom, Full Blown: Easter Weekend

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter Weekend

I am so grateful to my Mom and Dad for sharing their experiences of Easter week in the Philippines. The depictions of depravity has compelled me to ponder deeply the significance of this week like I never have before and make it a week of spirituality for my family as I have contemplated the blessings of the knowledge of the gospel and the true meaning and expectations of the atonement in my own life. It has been a beautiful week and an uplifting day.

Each night this week we tried to study the correlating day of Christs last week. It was a good way to imprint the true symbolism of this season into our hearts. After church today, we laid blankets out on the lawn and had a "New Testament" lunch with fish, bread, grapes, olives, figs and grape juice that we ate mostly out of baskets with our hands. We watched an edited version of "The Lamb of God", which doesn't carry the same spiritual impact but is still necessary for the four youngest of my children, and a short video called "Only a Stonecutter" about the story of John Rowe Moyle, a man who walked 22 miles to work on the Salt Lake Temple every week for 20 years, even after his leg had to be amputated (a very powerful and motivating lesson on consecration), and a short video the church put out on their website with a piece of Elder Holland's conference message. The weather was perfect and so symbolic of Springs Easter message. It has been a beautiful day!

Jordan went to Prom last night. (He said it was the best night of his life;-) Mikayla and Eden and I met one group of his friends over at another home and took pictures for an hour. It is so much fun to watch the exuberance and love for life these youth have. They are such good kids and I will miss them all profoundly when they head off to college and work and missions. Life and our house will be much too quiet.

Cousin's Egg Hunt at My Sisters:

Dillon (one of Jordan's best friends) arriving in his "sweet" (Corvette) car for Prom:

Jordan going to pick up his Prom date in his "sweet" (Geo) car:

Picture Time at Dillon's Home:

"Brothers" and Sisters:

Jordan and Zoey Being Silly:

Easter Morning:

All Dressed Up:

My Handsome Men:

Our "New Testament" Lunch:

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"I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails. I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbor's children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived." (Marjorie Pay Hinckley)

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand Utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human being s should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." (Howard Zinn)

“God made the world for the delight of human beings--if we would see His goodness everywhere, His concern for us, His awareness of our needs: the phone call we’ve waited for, the ride we are offered, the letter in the mail, just the little things He does for us throughout the day. As we remember and notice His love for us, we just begin to fall in love with Him because He is so busy with us--you just can’t resist Him. I believe there’s no such thing as luck in life, it’s God’s love, it’s His.” (Mother Teresa)

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing the things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.” (C.S. Lewis)

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Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter Weekend

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