Easter at Esperanza

 Easter weekend was a special time.  We were blessed at the start of the weekend with wonderful weather.  Saturday turned out to be quite busy day as I did school work all morning and was able to get almost all the lessons planned for Monday.  In the afternoon it was warm enough that I sat out on the deck and peeled a bunch of carrots for the stuffing and then grated them and chopped bread onions and celery to make two huge trays of stuffing.  Two of the ladies came over to my house and we laid out egg trays on our dining room table and filled 13 doz plastic eggs with candy.  The result was very colourful.  These eggs were to be hidden the next day. 

We awoke Easter day to much needed rain, but really would have rather had the sun of the previous day.  We had about 40 visitors coming in from just up the coast and the room where we usually have church was not big enough and so we were hoping to have had it outside but ended up in the gym.  People really joined in the singing and then we had a snack followed by the sermon, which was my students helping to tell the Easter story using the Resurrection Eggs. (for those of you who don't know these are plastic eggs that contain an object relating to the week before Easter, a donkey, money, a cup,  a whip, etc).  We had opened 11 in school and they all had to explain they're object.  The last egg was to be opened in church.  We finished all 11 and then sang a few verses of Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.  Before the last verse we opened the final egg, only to find it was empty!  We talked about the empty tomb and sang the last verse, Were you there when He rose up from the dead.  It was a good time of worship together and then many of the first nation people gave testimonies.  It was no longer raining and so the kids went outside for the egg hunt and we continued working on the meal.  I carved 2 turkeys of the 3 we had.  We also had ham and a very large tuna and loads of other food.  About 90 of us sat down to eat.  It was quite a day. 

We had torrential rain overnight and so hopefully that should help us get water power again.

A view from the classroom window

We have now started out 3rd week in school.  Several kids were sick today and so we are hoping they will be back tomorrow.  We have an additional teacher assistant who is a friend of one of the staff.  She cannot be awarded her degree till she has finished Math 12 and needs to spend about 3 hours a day working on it.  I spend about that much time in the classrooom doing lesson prep and so she is going to help in the classroom in the morning and work on her Math in the afternoon and I can help her if she needs it and otherwise work on the lessons.  A great solution all round.   Well I need to get ready for bed and so I'll say goodnight.  I wish you all a great week ahead.

Thanks for you interest and you prayers.  Janet