Easter Weekend

On Good Friday morning, we had a party at Kathy Beverlin's house. Around 30 friends from church gathered together to surprise Jess. We knew it would probably be a difficult weekend for her. For about a month, the girls from the young married's Sunday School class and a few others (like we oldies) purchased many of the Cora Paige Etsy items that were being sold by crafters all over the country. Many of these crafters did not know Jess personally but had been touched by the story of Cora's life. We wanted Jess to have a collection of these items. Amanda Balzer and Kendall Smith wrote a darling poem to help present Jess with her with the basket of love. You can read this poem on Amanda's blog:http://thebalzerfamily.blogspot.com/. Here is the basket that was given with some of the items. We passed all the things around the room so we could see them all.



Most everyone had been given a page to fill out with verses or memories of Cora and Kendall put this little scrap book together for Jess to treasure.

Kathy fixed delicious waffles...

...with all the trimmings.

And a great coffee bar too!

Gorgeous flowers!

My dear friend Sarah, who helps me co-lead our young mom's Bible study on Daniel. With her sweet daughter, Rachael who is married to Jess' brother. We are looking forward to having them move back to the Newton area!! Can't wait for Matt to begin working in our basement!!

On Friday evening, Allen and I decided to go to a concert at the colliseum. We got there an hour early, but had to park on the south side of the colliseum. I've never had to do that before. At $10 tickets, the place was packed! Sold out!

I could have done without Hawk Nelson - way too loud and screechy for me!!! When you can't even understand the words, I can't find that worshipful. But lots of people knew all the words and were truly praising God. For me - it was a great time for intermission! But Jeremy Camp and Mercy Me were great.

When we got there, we found decent seats but ended up moving because when the singing began the kids in front of us were going to be standing the whole concert. My ankles and feet can't take that. So we worked our way around the colliseum and couldn't find any seats at all! Finally we ended up behind the stage!

And actually that wasn't a bad thing. The screen was a 2-way and we could watch the bands fairly close. I knew I might be in trouble when the lady next to me was dancing in her seat. Wow was she ever bouncy!! She was really into it!! But the neat thing was to be able to see the people in the first few rows. Did you know that the Timothy Connor family was on the front row?? They won tickets evidently to be there and to also get to go backstage with the bands. Wow! There were 4 girls on the second row who you could tell had no desire to be there. I think they were Emos - a new fad of showing no emotions. So I prayed for each one individually. Age 16 is a time of much turmoil for many but is a time God speaks to kids' hearts too. Both Al and I committed our lives to Him at that age.

Although many of the bands were not my type of music, and seeing vendors with cotton candy going up and down the aisles made it seem more like a circus than a worship concert, it was good to see this sold out crowd praising the King of Kings. I wonder how, when we are in heaven we will all worship Christ with our various music style likes and dislikes? Country music, heavy metal rock, mellow style, African..... It seems people are very particular on what they like in music, you know? I wonder what "heaven" music will be like? I loved Jeremy Camps' song "There will be a day". The older I get, the more I do long for that day!

On Saturday we celebrated Easter with my parents, Aunt Millie, Mindy and Dex and Adam, Jill and the girls.

We had a fun Easter egg hunt. Sophia was so excited, she just had to do a somersault!

On Easter Sunday, I took a picture at church of the cross we had up on the stage. I think my camera is demon possessed though, because it uploaded all my pictures in my camera except that one! I re-tried to load it again onto my computer (it is in my camera!) but it just will not do it!! Very wierd. I really wanted to post it here, but oh well.

We had nursery for kids 0-5 and it was really fun. LOTS of volunteers and I even had to tell some that we didn't need them! Last week I was sweating it that we might have to tell people a nursery wouldn't be provided. We were giving all our regular staff the day off, but there were many willing to come and be with the children. It was so fun to sing with the kids - I went to each room, toddler through 5's to tell the Easter story and sing with them. At the end, each child got to take an Easter egg with them. The older children had theirs filled with jelly beans and a poem that tells the story of Easter. The younger children had theirs filled with little fishies and the words "Follow the Fisherman" on the egg.

Church was so good and I had to cry just thinking again of Christ's love and sacrifice for us. I have been reading "Forever in Love with Jesus" and it says "Nothing seems to trouble the Lord more than being forgotten and betrayed by the one for whom He has sacrificed so much. If you don't really care for someone, you are not terribly hurt if he does not care for you. But as Charles Spurgeon observed: 'This, then is clear proof that God greatly loves His people, since, whenever their hearts wander from Him, He is greatly grieved.' If you have experienced betrayal by a spouse, best friend, or close family member, then you know there is no pain like it. When you are knit together with someone, whether in body or in soul, and a severing occurs, it tears at your very being. You are unable to sleep, to concentrate, to keep the tears from flowing." Christ longs for an intimate relationship with us, but how often, as believers, we find ourselves too busy for Him, even ignore Him. "He rejoices over us, and it breaks His heart to be forgotten, to see us running after other lovers, reducing our relationship to ritual, breaking our 'marriage vows'."

Sunday afternoon, the extended Graber family came over for Easter. We had 3 pies, fruit/angelfood torte and lots of other food. Yum!!

The Graber girls (and one Stephenson - Al's sister, Julie, on the right).

Al and his brothers, Reuben and Sid.

Usually, we hide eggs and the littlest kids hunt for them. Well, Mindy and Dex had given us the idea of having everyone do the searching. So we made everyone go to our bedroom (and we found out when we went to bed last night that they short sheeted us while they were in there!) while Allen and I hid over 100 eggs all over the house, upstairs and downstairs (since it was raining outside).

What's in this one?

Sophie is fussy today - probably from

too much chocolate!









Hannah took her eggs and lined up all the chocolates and sorted them.

Then she proceeded to put them in her sock. Yummy!

What a blessing of family and friends!