Conference, Passover and Easter

April 13, 2012

Conference, Passover and Easter

Easter time is so wonderful. I start getting excited for it soon after Christmas excitement dies down! I love the spirit of new beginnings, the way the whole world starts coming alive again, and remembering who made it all possible.

For the past several years we have been doing various renditions of the Passover Seder dinner as a family, usually on Good Friday. I made a Seder plate like the one below for my Mom & stepdad for Christmas - we hope to someday celebrate the passover with them - because of Peter's Jewish heritage and Christian/LDS faith he has a unique perspective. And my mom just visited Israel this year and has a deep love for Jewish culture and history.

This year was special because we had some close friends join us. Even though we had lots of hungry, small children and it was a ton of work and quite late in the evening by the time we actually did the dinner and ceremony, I still felt my understanding of the passover grow. I was reminded of two things:

- that the sweet can be mingled with bitter, that our greatest joys are often borne of our greatest sorrows and misfortunes. Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our weaknesses can be made strengths.

- the privilege we have to celebrate the passover each week as we partake of the sacrament in our church services.

And, it is especially fun to now have an Elijah at the table during passover time :) I'm still on the hunt for a good, interactive, kid-friendly Haggadah (recommendations anyone?)

So many of the talks given at General Conference this month really tied in with Passover and Easter this year that I thought I'd link to a few. Elder Oaks' talk about Sacrifice really touched me, and my friend Heidi brought to my attention Elder Perry's talk about "The Power of Deliverance". And one of my very favorites was Sister Esplin's talk about "Teaching Our Children to Understand". That really is the spirit of the passover. We have been having some special teaching moments lately like the one she describes the mother having.

And then, it was Easter!

We had a total of 3 egg hunts. Yes, it was overkill. I guess I do remember as a kid hiding eggs over and over and over and loving every minute. As soon as the kids got out their baskets on Wednesday they decided to do a spontaneous hunt in the park and invited one of the girls they met there to join us. Then we had an egg hunt with our park day group on Friday. And then the neighborhood hunt on Saturday.

Easter Sunday was special and we had a really nice family devotional/testimony meeting with my brother and his family. We loved watching the new Bible Videos. And, I was glad when Monday came and the candy disappeared!