Our Easter Weekend

On Good Friday this year, we took our family to the chapel in the afternoon and shared an activity that had been a part of the Young Women activity the night before on their mutual night. It was based on the atonement of Jesus Christ, and entailed everyone carrying a backpack in which were placed rocks of varying sizes with different burdens named on them - things that we find hard in our lives, like illnesses, death of loved ones, sins, others treating us badly in different ways, etc. etc. Then we had to make our way to the other end of the corridor, (back to Heavenly Father's presence), but the problem was there were two enormous walls blocking the corridor. Both were made from cardboard boxes (our moving boxes), one representing death, and the second representing spiritual death, or sin.

We went into a few different rooms where we listened to stories and a few scriptures that explain the different things Jesus Christ did that enable us (with his help) to overcome both of these major obstacles. We discussed it so that everybody understood, and understood the relevance to them. At each point there was a beautiful picture of the Saviour representing that part of what he'd done - the resurrection, praying in Gethsemane, etc., and having understood the importance of that part of his sacrifice, we left our relevant burdens with him. The resurrection is free to all on the earth, and so I broke down that wall for everyone to go through. The next wall, everybody had some work to do to help get through that wall. We talked about how repentance erases our sins and Heavenly Father remembers them no more, and so the YW and our family erased the things we'd written that we had done wrong, and left those burdens by the picture of the Saviour in Gethsemane. We also looked at how he suffered for all of our pains, sicknesses, sorrows, temptations, etc. so that he would know how to succor us in our time of need, and were able to leave those last burdens there with the Saviour, feeling no burdens on our backs any more as he was helping to carry our load, just as he can in our lives when we turn to him and ask him for help. Everyone having broken through the last wall, we reached a picture of the Saviour hugging someone on his return back home to Heavenly Father. We thought about what that would feel like if we had followed the Saviour and allowed him to take our burdens from us along the way. It was a special experience bothe that afternoon and the night before with the young women. Then we finished off by watching a video, "The Mediator".

It took a lot longer with our younger family, but helped us to really appreciate the significance of Easter a whole lot more. It was good to use it all again too before having to pack it all away again and take it all back home! It took a lot of preparation time, but was well worth it. :o)

Sunday morning, the sacrament bread was what the young women had also made on the Thursday night. We unfortunately didn't get there in time having been out too late (at the beach!) the night before and everybody being VERY grumpy and late because of it that morning. It was special for those who were there though! In the afternoon, we drew easter pictures and patterns on boiled eggs with wax crayons and then dyed them, and that became part of our lunch the following day. It was a nice time to spend together, and a fairly calm thing to do with everyone being so tired! We also gave the children a couple of books about the Easter story we had acquired some time ago.

Monday is the time we do other things, so that is when we had an egg hunt. It was a treasure hunt again, each child having their own trail of eggs to follow in their own colour. Along the way were some plastic eggs to fill with fruity treasure, and they were all a bit baffled at the end to find their treasure! Unfortunately as I imported all of the photos into our computer this time it came up with a thumbnail of all of them, so I deleted them, but you can't view the best ones, so this is all I have...






They soon understood when they opened a gift that we got for them all to share, but unfortunately we didn't get to try it out right then. It was a bit late anyway by then, but as we looked at it, Peter climbed up onto the stool beside me and promptly fell backwards off it. He got a cut on the back of his head, and was quite upset, so it put an end to everything else for the day/evening. We did open a funny parcel that Granma had sent to us though! Here's what was inside...



... 4 apples to feed to the horses at Stanmer Park!
It was very thoughtful of her, and a fun thing to open in the post (we'd left it a few days to open in its packet as we didn't know if it was for Easter - it smelled very sweetly scented! As the girls know you're not allowed to feed the horses there though, and that we also shouldn't feed apples to a horse without knowing it's personal dietary needs and what else it's been eating, they very quickly decided they'd better eat them instead. It took all of a minute or two for four children to polish them off, surely as fast as a horse would have eaten them!