Easter Weekend

HE HAS RISEN!!!
     This past weekend was Easter weekend for all of you that were not aware. Easter is a big deal to me. It didn't used to be, until I got into the youth program at my church. That's when the whole idea and my way of viewing Easter changed. Each year my church has an Easter vigil. A vigil is "wakefulness maintained for any reason during the normal hours for sleeping," according to dictionary.com. Each year on Easter weekend we all show up at the church Friday night (Good Friday.) That night we have a "Good Friday Service of Darkness" which the youth runs. This year we sang some songs and showed some videos. During the last song 12 different youth members got to go blow out 12 of the candles on the alter (I being one of the chosen youth members) until there was only one candle left. From that candle we lit a torch that we took outside to a fire pit in this big grassy area in front of the church in sight of the road. We lit a fire there, our goal for the weekend was to keep the fire burning for the rest of the weekend until Easter morning. For those of you not familiar with the story of Easter, Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and died. He was dead for three days, and rose from the dead on the third day which is the day we celebrate Easter. (Just FYI that's a very watered-down, short, not very good, explanation. I highly recommend you read the actual story in the Bible.) So the point of it all is we are "waiting for Jesus." Its an interesting experience, we all stay at the church, sleep on the couches in the youth room, and everyone sign up for a shift out by the fire. There is always someone out by the fire unless there was a storm warning (which we did have a few of those.) It was lots of fun! Here's some pictures from it:

Drew on Saturday morning

Rebecca and her new camera

Drew makes a face

The fire

The fire and the cross

Drew playing his mandolin

Real life Chelmo

Mandolin Playin'

Hat hair :)

     It was a lot of fun and me, Drew, and Chavis stayed the whole weekend except for a few hours on Saturday night me and Drew left. Me and Drew went to my grandmas house where my dads side of the family was celebrating Easter. Yep, Drew met my family. And I'm happy that Drew still likes me even after meeting my insane family. Over all the weekend was really good, and defiantly an Easter to remember. How was your Easter? What did you do? I'd love to hear from you.

God Bless