oh gray sky, why?!?

looking, looking...

found it!

(this is totally the face I was going for)

We went to an Easter egg hunt and/at church, but it was all so gray and cold it didn't quite feel like the sunny Easter's of my New Hampshire childhood. Last year our family had more focus on the Easter bunny, but it was really dropped this year. Bobei didn't mention it, so we didn't either. I guess that's what happens when you're a missionary all of sudden! Ha!

After church our friend, Masako, took us to our first Hanami experience in Niza(not far from here). We drank hot oolong from cans, munched on onigiri, played catch, and climbed trees. The sakura are in full bloom now and everywhere you look. On sunny days they shine like clouds and on gray days they glow pink white like snow that doesn't land. Many people were out picnicking with family and friends for the entire day. Some people had set up their own grills and were having barbecue, drinking sake and ignoring the cold weather to be together. Its incredible how people of all ages enjoy this beautiful time of year which is mainly all about flowers. I don't really know too many American teenage boys who would be jazzed about cherry blossom picnics. Shame, really.

But, I did have some not so cutesy-girl-collecting colored eggs-happy-Easter thoughts that were put on my heart:

See all these people? (And there were hundreds more, believe me)

They have no idea it is Easter.

No Easter bunny, no colored eggs, no hippity hop, no dying for sins, no savior.

And ultimately I don't want to go all missionary here, in this blog, but God really put it on my heart this Easter that this can't be in Japan. We can't be celebrating Easter at home with our Easter baskets, or at our churches, or behind the high concrete walls of the Christian Academy. We've got to honor the day that is most important to our faith and lives and eternal lives out in the open where everyone can see. So that people wonder, 'what are those people doing?' And then maybe they'll ask us, or they'll Google "egg hunt" and start to get a picture of the most important thing they could ever know. JESUS LIVES! HOSANNA! PRAISE THE LORD! I AM NOT DEAD! I CAN LIVE ETERNALLY IN HEAVEN! Not separated from God, not at the mercy of other people or my own sins...HE IS RISEN! I AM SAVED! Our own friends didn't know it was Easter, or really what Easter was and it made me want to turn back time and organize a giant Easter parade through those sakura up there so that everyone would know its Easter, man, and you gotta know it. So, there's the goal. A big community Easter parade, everyone welcome to participate, join as you watch, Portland style, Japanese style, waving sakura branches and drinking sake...but for the best reasons: because God made it all; you, me, sakura, sake, and Jesus.

Well!

Uh...ok.

So...anyway...

all in all we had a nice Easter.