Sunday, March 23

Easter weekend

We had a service for Good Friday on Friday (duh!) at the chapel here on base. Seven different chaplains each took one of the seven statements Jesus made while being crucified and gave a short sermonette on it and we sang a verse of a hymn in between each one. It was very moving and I thought it was quite a good service. I fasted yesterday and took it pretty easy. There's not much for an admin guy like me to do on the weekends so I just put some finishing touches on getting my gear stored away.

This morning there was a sunrise service/breakfast at the chow hall and there were about 70 people there. It was pretty good too. A different chaplain (how many of them are there on this base anyway?) gave a short talk about the first rays of sun that lit the way to the first rays of hope on that first Easter Sunday. It was pretty good too. I thought it was amusing how many people started staring at us when we started all singing songs together.

The combined Protestant service at 11 was pretty awesome. It was held in the base's theater and we actually filled the place! There was a good size gospel choir leading the music and there was an interpretive dance done by mimes. It sounds funny, but they performed to a gospel song soundtrack and it was quite moving. I went back to the chow hall for lunch and they had finished decorating. I had to take pictures of what they put up. Besides, I said I was going to take some pictures today, right? Anyway, I'll get those onto the computer tonight so I can post a couple tomorrow. It almost reminded me of that one house that every neighborhood seems to have that apparently adds a new Christmas decoration every year and they've been doing it for 50 years. You know what I mean? That one house that confuses airline pilots because of all the lights? Well, the middle of the chow hall was like that, but it was all pastels and eggs and chocolate and bunnies and a couple of poorly drawn angels. If my kids were here I'm sure they would have loved it. Even the staff had little paper vests over their normal shirts decorated with pastel eggs. But the thing that almost made me laugh out loud was this giant... marshmellow... bunny. It was about 4 feet tall and posted on top of a mini-house platform so that it stands about 6 feet off the floor. The first thing that popped into my head was the last VeggieTales show I watched with my kids before I left. I'll give you a hint... it had to do with chocolate bunnies and how everyone was required to look up to this giant bunny built by Mr. Nezzer. Too funny.

Anyway, that's my Easter so far. I'm going to the evening service tonight then I'll try to implement this schedule I've built over the last few days. We'll see what happens. It's already starting to get warm out here. Going to be a long summer...

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