The angel of the Lord
said to the women,”Do no be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus,
who was crucified. He is not here, He is
risen, just as He said. Come and see the
place where he lay”.
Matthew28:5&6
After four months of traveling from country to country,
there are still times where you have to just look around you and say, “Am I
really here?” For me this past Easter
Sunday was just one of those days. It
started at 5:20 am. There was a group of
us that were going to get up early to have our own little sunrise service. I was excited, since I had wanted to get up
early one day to watch the sunrise anyway.
I got up and was out the door at 5:30, only to find that it was raining
outside and no one else was there. So, I
stayed till it got light (and I felt safe) and then left and headed up into the
mountains for my own little service.
It was kind of nice to be alone because it gave lots of time
to reflect. It’s been years since I’ve
been to a sunrise service. I thought
back to when I was little. We would get
up early and my mom would get the three of us ready in our new Easter dresses,
while my dad went to prepare for the service.
We would eat a hot cross bun and then walk, in the dark, cold and
usually wet grass, with our new white sandals, to the Frank Lloyd Wright chapel
in the cemetery. I remember sitting in there,
bundled up, on the wooden pew bench, and singing the Easter hymns. I remember watching the sunlight start to
streak through the windows and
feeling
it get warmer as we just sat there and then leaving later without needing a
coat or mittens. I also remembered an
Easter, where as we walked back to church for breakfast, wondering if what I was
seeing…if that was what the two women on their way to the grave, experienced.
I think in the states, Easter just becomes so routine. You get up, get dressed, maybe check out the
Easter basket, jump in the car and head to church. Erin and I even talked about how this Easter
we would not be “all dressed up” or being wearing cute, strappy sandals. It seems we’ve kind of become desensitized to
what Easter is really about. We have to
have something visual, like the movie “The Passion of Christ” or live off away
from everything, to be able to “feel it”.
Maybe it’s because this year, I don’t have the “normal comfort”, that
got me thinking, as I walked along the muddy, uneven, and heavily “animal
trafficked” road to my spot on the hill, back in time again. What was it like for those two women?
Was it cold that morning?
Was there dew all over? They
didn’t have Reebok tennis shoes back then, so did their feet get wet and dirty? Did they slip? Where the flowers in bloom? Was it overcast and dark? Did they pass and greet anyone else on their
way there? Where was the grave? Just in the middle of a garden…a cemetery…by
the side of the road…at the top of the hill?
What were they thinking on there way there? Were they making plans in their minds of what
to say to the guards…how to prepare the body?
Were they nervous about the big task ahead of them, along with being
sad? Did the words, “…and on the third
day be raised again.” (Luke 24:7) ever ring through their mind at all that
morning?
Around 6:15, I got up to the top, just sat on a rock and
overlooked a cemetery with a big cross in the middle of it against the back
drop of the mountains. I just sat there
and reflected some more on what exactly took place that first Easter morning
and then had my own little time of worship.
Needless to say, I think this was one of my most enjoyable early Easter
mornings yet.
I should mention here that that part was the serious part of
my blog. This next part just shows you a
little more of what our life is like, especially when it comes to bathroom
adventures.
We left for church that morning around 9am. We went to Abrams church. He actually owns the hostel we are staying in
and goes to the Baptist church that’s about 3 blocks away from our church. We were asked to preach that morning there,
so a small group of us went there.
By the time we got there, I had to go the bathroom…let’s
just say it was a #2. The church was a
larger, one room type area, but I didn’t see any bathroom around, so I asked if
they had one. Abram got all excited and
said yes, and led me out the side door into the back yard. They were adding onto the building they
already had. This one would have a
toilet inside…the only problem was there was only one part that was built so
far. Over to the left corner, under an
awning, and out in the wide open, sat a lone toilet. I thought, “Oh, you’ve got to be
kidding”. I guess I should have been
excited that it was more than a hole in the ground AND that it had a seat
cover. (That’s hard to find in Central and South America),
but I was just standing there thinking, this is really not good! Abram was like, one moment, one moment. So I stood and waited as he cleaned off the
toilet seat, flushed it, and then went and grabbed two big piece of sheet metal
and put them side by side in front of the toilet.
When he was done, I went into the “stall”, only to discover
that the metal was a little off, so if anyone came out of the church’s side
door, it wouldn’t matter if there was anything in front of the toilet or not. On top of that, there was an outside faucet
that kept running right next to toilet, so the entire time, I was being sprayed
by water. Of course, there was no toilet
paper out there, so I had to dig through my pockets to find my own. Then, I couldn’t find the “paper can” (you
don’t flush toilet paper either in South or Central
America), so I sat there kind of laughing to myself, wondering
what to do and could anything else happen.
I had noticed that earlier he used water from the faucet to fill a
bucket and then flushed the toilet by pouring water from the bucket, so I
thought I’d just fill a bucket and flush it that way. When I went over to pick up a bucket though,
all of a sudden the water that had been on full blast, stopped. I was like “AGHHHHH” and tried to “fix” the
faucet, so it would run again…it didn’t.
So, I thought, I’ll just forget it, and hopefully they will forget about
me by the time someone needs to flush the toilet again. So, I went back in the church only to be
greeted by Abram explaining that more would be built on soon and sorry that the
conditions were like that. I told him it
was okay and prayed that he wouldn’t go out there anytime soon.
Ten minutes later I saw him disappear out the back and he
didn’t come back in. Meanwhile, Michelle,
who has been battling “stomach problems” since the first day we got here, said
she needed to use the toilet. Abram had
taken the metal down, so we had to wait for him to put it back up and then I
stood in front of the metal, kind of as a bathroom guard, for Michelle. While Michelle was “in the stall”, a couple
came up. They looked at me kind of funny
because I was just standing there talking to “no one”, till they heard Michelle’s
voice. They left after that and then the
young pastor came up to me. I told him
the bathroom was occupied and he said, “okay, just make sure you flush it when
you are finished this time.”
AGHHHHH!!! The funny part is when
Michelle was finished, I told her we needed to make sure we flushed it, but the
water still was not working. She asked
what would happen if she just pushed down the handle. I told her I didn’t know, but I didn’t think
it worked. The pushed down the
handle…and it flushed….yeah….live and learn…that’s my life now…
