What are the gringos doing now?

The week of Easter is referred to here as "semana santa".  On Monday the city of San Jose begins to slow down and by Wednesday almost everything is closed and traffic is almost non-existent.  On Friday there are many processionals of the resurrections of Jesus throughout the cities of Costa Rica.  It is quite surreal.  The Roman (tico) soldiers march through the streets and then near the end soldiers are carrying a huge float of Jesus on the cross.  The next float that comes by is one of the Virgin Mary.  What a site!  Friday is a day that is highly celebrated here.  It is a significant day in our history-the cruxificion of our Lord Jesus.  

But on Saturday everything reopens and life continues as normal on the streets of San Jose.  There is no Easter candy on the shelves in stores, no peeps, no cadbury robin eggs (my favorite) and no mention of Easter Sunday.  My heart was burdened that there was no mention of the resurrection-the HOPE of glory!

So on Sunday we decided to have Easter dinner with our missionary family here.  A wonderful church in NC had sent us baskets for our children for Easter and some eggs.  So we invited some of the children in the neighborhood and one of our fellow missionaries organized an Easter egg hunt.

I cannot imagine what the neighbors were thinking as they witnessed us "gringos" running around the park with baskets finding eggs.  I couldn't help but giggle to myself thinking what it must have looked like.  However, for our children it is important to keep as many family tradition as we can.  

That evening we had fried chicken, homemade macaroni & cheese, potatoes, deviled eggs, green beans, and it was SO yummy!  Even though we didn't have our family from the US, we are so grateful that the Lord has given us friends here to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and what we fondly call "Easter".