The Tales of An Anglo-American Mormon Family: Easter 2016

     Easter was early this year. It fell on March 27, which is Georgiana's birthday. Actually, Georgie was born on Easter Sunday in 2005, and I think this was the first time since then that the stars were aligned - or, the moon, I suppose - and Easter fell once again on her birthday.
     So, it was all systems go - again - for this wonderful, most important Christian holiday. Fortunately, the University of San Diego held its Spring Break during Holy Week, which made my life much, much, much easier. However, between me and all the children I think we had something like three separate spring break weeks. Somehow we managed to make it work. We had Easter weekend together, and that was the main thing. I may have written about this before, but Americans really are no good at holidays. One has to fight to maintain holiday traditions in this country, a sad indictment on our work culture.
     Anyway, let us start at the beginning. I got to use the first part of my week off supporting Abigail as she got all four of her wisdom teeth out. The process was painful and she was pretty incapacitated for a day or two. She was really unhappy that she had to get them out during Easter week, since this meant she couldn't eat very much. It just added a whole layer of drama and interest to the whole week, and but we had to take in our stride.

Abigail after the wisdom teeth removal - not a happy bunny!

Despite our teenage problems - which we will always have with us, I'm afraid - we still had to get on with the usual Easter crafts at the beginning of the week. We usually do at least two crafts - one is our big 'Easter craft' where we make a model from some part of the Easter story - be it the Cross, the Garden Tomb, the Last Supper, and so on. The other is a craft from one of Jesus's parables which he gave during Holy Week, which appear in different places in the four gospels. For our parable craft, we decided to keep it simple and go for the 'Sheep and the Goats' parable from Matthew 25. So we made clay models of sheep, which had the distinct advantage of multi-faceted symbolism: we are the Lord's sheep, we want to be found on His right hand on Judgment Day; also, Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and the Lamb of God (Agnes Dei), and so forth.

The Sommers and Ian McMillian join us for our Easter project

For our big Easter craft, we decided to do a model of the Garden of Gethsemane. For several years, Tim has been suggesting - in a rather tight-lipped way - that I direct smaller, less ambitious, craft projects that we don't have to shove in some random place in our garage when Easter is over. So I tried to do a scaled-down version of the model. We looked online at pictures of the olive trees in Gethsemane, and I had the kids make gnarled tree trunks out of terra cotta Sculpy. We then made a garden by gluing the trunks within a rock wall. We didn't even buy glue - just used a water and flour paste.

Samuel, Verity and Eleanor building the rock wall with newspaper, rocks, flour and water

A few days later, when the glue had dried, Abigail took a break from convalescing and very kindly finished off our Easter Garden.

Our minimalist Garden of Gethsemane, 2016

Everything started in earnest on Maundy Thursday, when we had our annual Jerusalem meal, which is our commemoration of the Last Supper. I don't try to replicate the Passover itself, since I'm not Jewish and I don't think I should be trying to execute rituals that are sacred to religions other than my own. But, of course, the Last Supper was a Passover meal, so in that sense I try to replicate what Jesus might have done at this meal, and how He used the symbolism of the Passover to explain the events that were about to take place with the Atonement. So we have a pared-down Christian version of the Seder plate, including a piece of lamb, horseradish, haroseth, and unleavened bread, to remind us of the Paschal Lamb, the bitterness and hardship of slavery to the Egyptians, and the commandment to leave Egypt in haste. In Christian terms, Jesus is the Paschal Lamb, and He came to deliver us from the bitterness and hardship of sin and death. I always put olives on the table, to remind us of Jesus's suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane. We also enjoyed a lamb and saffron stew, cheeses, nuts and dried figs. The meal always ends with an English Simnel cake, to remind us of Judas's betrayal after the meal.
This year we had our friends Cathy and Carrie Woolley join us for the dinner, as well as our German exchange student, Emilia. The missionaries came, too. Abigail was still very sore from her wisdom teeth extraction, so she couldn't do her usual entertainment at the meal, which is to eat a piece of horseradish straight up. But she provided entertainment, anyway.

Cathy and Carrie Woolley at Passover, with Emilia in the background, and a suffering Abigail

Various children had school on Good Friday - because this is America, you know - so our Good Friday brunch has now been moved, permanently, I fear, to Easter Sunday. We kept busy with plenty of other projects, like making marshmallow eggs, the requisite hot cross buns, and decorating Easter eggs. We ended the day with our legendary Good Friday dinner of fish and saffron pie, and our 'Easter Story in Eggs' activity.

Homemade marshmallow eggs - complete with egg whites and LOTS of golden syrup

Imogen and Nelly decorating eggs

The once-a-year hot cross buns project

Easter Saturday was just like the rest of Easter week - full of friends, family and activity. In the morning, the three little girls did an Easter egg hunt at a friend's house. I think Samuel declined to join, or at least threatened to decline. The waning interest is inevitable, I suppose, but it's still a little bit sad for me.

My little one still likes Easter egg hunts!

Eleanor enjoying herself at the hunt

Will this be Georgie's last hunt?

Then it was off to meet Tim's cousin Emma, who was visiting from the UK with some work colleagues from the BBC. They had all attended a conference in San Diego the week before, and luckily Emma was able to get away and stay with us on Saturday night so we could spend some time with her. But we thought it would be fun to do something together on the Saturday, so we went for the famous San Diego whale-watching tour. It's about a 2 hour boat ride, in which you go out to sea and spot the whales.

Tim, Samuel and Nelly ready to see the whales!

The teenagers aren't too cool for the whales! I think they might have even had a good time ...

I was all ready to go, and very happy about it, too. When the boat started moving I was fine, and had a nice chat with Emma and her work colleagues, catching up on events in the UK and so forth. I wanted to see the whales just as much as anyone else. But about 20 minutes into the boat ride, I was so sea-sick that I could barely think, and my skin had a very pale - though very distinct - green tinge to it. Thankfully there was a very nice lady who worked on the boat helping idiots like me who didn't think they needed sea-sick medicine. She told me to sit at the back of the boat, focus on one point on the horizon, and never look anywhere else. That did the trick, but it meant that all I remember from the trip is this:

My view from the back of the boat

From what I hear, the others did get to see the whales, and it was very cool. I had to content myself with dolphins who kindly positioned themselves at the back of the boat, so they were in my line of vision when they jumped up.

The whole whale watching party

The next morning was Easter! It was also Georgie's birthday, and so we had to do the whole 'breakfast and presents in bed' thing along with the Easter devotional and Easter basket thing. We did Georgie's birthday first, so we all gathered in her room to give her breakfast and watch her open her pile of presents.

Happy 11th birthday, Georgie!

Then we did our Easter devotional in her room, by reading the account of Easter Sunday in John 20. I especially like this account because it describes how Mary was the first one to see the resurrected Jesus. Tim and I bore our testimonies of Jesus to the kids. It was then downstairs to see the Easter baskets, and get ready for our Easter brunch and then, of course, our church service.

Easter morning, 2016!

Tim got a tie, as per usual, and Emilia got a starfish

Easter brunch was an occasion, with all the usual suspects, like hot cross buns and my new favorite, Greek Tsoureki bread.

Easter Sunday brunch, 2016, with our guests Emma and Emilia

Passion fruit confiture: the star of the brunch!

My Greek Tsoureki bread - what's not to like?

     Our church service was really wonderful. I was very blessed in that I had been asked to be one of two people to address the congregation on Easter Sunday, so I got to spend Easter week studying the scriptures and thinking a bit more intensely about Jesus than perhaps I do normally. In preparing for my talk, I was really moved by this quote from Elder Boyd K. Packer: 'Upon Christ was the burden of all human transgression, all human guilt ... He by choice accepted the penalty in behalf of all mankind for the sum total of all wickedness and depravity; for brutality, immorality, perversion, and corruption; for the killings and torture and terror - for all of it that ever had been or all that ever would be enacted upon this earth. In so choosing He faced the awesome power of the evil one, who was not confined to flesh or subject to mortal pain. That was Gethsemane!'
     That quote got me thinking quite deeply about just what it means that Jesus has suffered for my sins; indeed, what it means for Him to have suffered the burden of everyone's sins. I thought a lot about the suffering that comes as a result of sin. That led me to ponder especially Matthew 26:36-38 and Mark 14:33, where it recounts Jesus's suffering in Gethsemane.  It says that Jesus was exceedingly sad, troubled, and distressed in His soul, which is psyche in the Greek.  So, in my church address, I talked a bit about the kind of parallel suffering that happens between us and Christ regarding our sins. Sin always brings about a kind of mental anguish - that is, we all suffer for our sins to some degree. But our suffering can be swallowed up in the suffering of Christ, because His suffering has a unique kind of power to cleanse us, sanctify us, and overcome evil.
     I also used this quote in my talk from C. S. Lewis: 'The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start ... We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity ... We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from the outside shows through into our own world.'
     After church, we had our special Easter roast meal of lamb, roasted potatoes, vegetables, and ending with the perennial Strawberry Rhubarb trifle. We sang Happy Birthday to Georgie, and dived into her birthday carrot-bunny-Easter garden cake. Life is good, especially at Easter.