Passover Week

This Passover week was very special to us this year. It's our first week living it in Florida. Well, the truth is that we were here last Easter, but we were only visiting Mat while we searched for a place to live. We spent that Easter at First Baptist Church Orlando, but we were able to spend this Easter at our home church, in our established home.

Let me tell you how God blessed me this week:

We have been attending a homeschool group PE class at the YMCA here. Andrew goes nearly every Tuesday, and we have met some of the most precious families there. I was feeling really down at the beginning of this week, and after one day of moping and feeling super sorry for myself, God sent so many friends my way to remind me of HIS love for me through others. I could go into detail, but you wouldn't believe me. I will tell you one short story. A sweet lady I met at the YMCA came into PE class Tuesday (after I'd been gone for 2 weeks) asking me if I would attend Easter dinner at her house with her family and other Florida transplants. I had already succumbed to the fact that it would just have been the 4 of us for Easter dinner, but we were invited to a huge dinner.

We have been attending (moving slowly to make a wise decision) a new church plant 1 mile from our home called Bible Harvest Chapel. It was only built and opened in January right around the same time that we started the search for a new church. And has God ever blessed us there! The church has grow leaps and bounds from the small group of families who met at a school previous to the building opening. I can tell you why...God is there!

God is present in the worship like I've never experienced anywhere else. God is present in the messages, and the people are just so kind! We've only been a handful of times, but we've already made relationships.

So this past Wednesday, the church had a family passover Seder...which all 4 of us were able to attend (yep, even Lizzy). I invited a precious family to go with us, and they joined us in learning and teaching their children about why we celebrate passover. It was a very relaxed environment. Poor Andrew really tried to understand passover, but he got so worked up when we got home. He thought we needed to cover our door with lamb's blood so he wouldn't die. It proved to be a great teaching experience, and now Andrew seems to understand passover more than I imagined he would.

Thursday, there was a Seder for adults only, and Friday there was a cross raising and communion. We were unable to attend these, but there is always next year!

Saturday, we attended a picnic & Easter egg hunt with out old church family. We were a bit late b/c Andrew had a soccer game (and b/c we exercised at the YMCA before enjoying our Easter feast). When we got there, we enjoyed our picnic, and we saw so many friends. They held the biggest egg hunt I'd ever seen with melty chocolate and even money filled eggs! The kids had a blast, and we were able to sit and share a relaxed time with friends.

Sunday morning, I woke up to find Mat had gotten up to cook us an Easter feast. Coffee, turkey sausage, scrambled eggs, and biscuits!!! Then we got ready for church, but when we opened the garage door, we found we had been egged. There were at least 2 dozen candy filled Easter eggs on our lawn (and it's a jungle out there b/c the lawn guy hasn't come for wayyyy tooo long). The kids had a blast gathering eggs before going to church...and I still don't know who the Easter bunny was.

We went to church for the beautiful and very worshipful service at Harvest, came home, cooked up a nice veggie for our Easter dinner, and headed to our friend's house. The kids had another egg hunt, swam, we ate lots of delicious food, and we had the best time celebrating Easter with our new dear friends.

This Easter was truly a time of Christ showering His love on our family! I hope you found it to be the same for you!