Love and Easter

Happy Easter Sunday!

Lots of fun stuff today. We went to church for the first time in Russia. The service didn't start until 3pm and I think it's the first time I've ever been to church on time. The church we went to was the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy, which is endorsed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Methodist Church, the American Baptist Church, the Reformed Church of America and the Presbyterian Church USA. Never in my life have I wished more for anything than a Cracker Barrel close by. Sneaking out a few minutes early would have missed every denomination headed out to Sunday Lunch!

I get distracted at church. I can't help it. When something happens at church that catches your attention, it's probably not supposed to be happening, therefore it is impossible to avoid. The Moscow LutheranMethodistBaptistReformedPresbyterians are no different in this regard. The church building was old and beautiful and had these amazing acoustics that needed no microphone. Of course, our minister still used one, so I have to admit, some of my attention went to looking behind me to see if there was a speaker or if that really was an announcement sans microphone.

Kids are usually the most distracting thing for me at church. Call it jealousy (as much as I want to squirm in my seat of pull my dress up over my head and hide, its deemed "inappropriate") but they are just the sweetest, funniest things to watch. Second only to their mortified parents. And based on our track record, Hubs and I will probably have a different take on the cuteness factor if we ever have kids. Generally speaking, the children in this congregation were very well-behaved. The minister giving the children's service even asked the kids questions which they answered aloud. I haven't seen a children's minister that ballsy in years. Not since little Johnny outed Daddy and his real thoughts about coming to church... eesh. The only exception was a cute couple of kids and their somewhat frazzled-looking dad. To give him credit, he should have been much more frazzled than he looked, so he was handling it pretty well. These two children did not go up front to the children's sermon. The son, probably around four years old had a perma-grin, which can only mean the most fun kind of mischief. He stayed in dad's lap, but frequently had a comment to whisper in his ear, I can only imagine it was a good old fashioned knock-knock joke or observation that the minister was wearing something similar to mom's robe. The little girl, who I'd guess to be around two years old sat by herself very still for the most part. Until she found out how much fun it was to stick her head in the space between the chair backs and make faces at the man behind her. Hilarious. And who can resist making a face back? Not this gal and, as I found out, not the serious-looking man sitting directly behind her.

The choir sang beautifully, a blend of sweet voices and accents. "He Lives" was at times drowned out by "He Liffes" and "thank you" replaced with "sank you". It made me smile, another distraction. It sounds awful, I know. I'm an adult and I need to pay attention, but I love to see people in their own humanity. I like to think that God notices more than the sermon, too, and that he enjoys us in our own humanity, especially when we're not supposed to be. He sees us. He knows we come to worship but who can resist that sweet child's giggle, even if it is during prayer time. I'm fairly certain that He's laughing out loud, and I'm almost positive I know the people laughing with him and I get kind of jealous.

After church, we went to the grocery store in search of food for our perfect Easter Dinner. We couldn't find any spiral cut ham, so we bought ham sandwich slices and were ready to go to town on them, but found some marinated pork chops instead. I don't know why we're so drawn to the pre-marinated meats. They could be soaked in pig shit for all we know. Meh. Since we didn't have ham, it was very important to make up for it with the other staples like pasta salad and deviled eggs. This is where things got a little challenging.

We don't know the Russian word for Mayonaise. And let me tell you this, you never really know how many things in your local grocery store look like mayonaise until you can't understand what any of those containers say. We didn't want another buttermilk/milk situation, so we decided to use this dressing stuff we had found last week and used in a salad. I don't really want to write about how it tastes because I honestly don't know and when I try and think of a comparison, I overthing the flavor and I start to think it tastes bad. So all you need to know is that it's not bad. And it's pink with stuff in it. We'll refer to it as Russian dressing. So we put that stuff, with dill and cheese and salami and olive chunks into our pasta salad and put it away. I have no idea what it's going to taste like. No idea. Then, on to the deviled eggs. First off, I never know exactly how long to boil an egg and it's pretty hard to guess since it doesn't change or move or float or anything that would tell you that the egg is hard-boiled. Drives me crazy. But these cooked perfectly and we mixed the Russian dressing, dill and some chipotle flakes we brought in with us. (the only spice we brought in)

It was a HIT! Everything came out perfectly! We had some dinner rolls and green beans to top everything off and it was perfect. Half of our dishes may have been slathered in an unknown dressing, but somehow it all came together. An Easter miracle!

Another successful Easter, which, I might add, is my favorite holiday! And the best part about Easter in Russia is that it's not even Easter here yet! The Russian Orthodox church recognizes Easter NEXT Sunday! If we didn't already know we were in the right place, we certainly do now.

Cheers to our Savior who gives us life, purpose, distractions, giggles and good stories.

Happy Resurrection Sunday everyone!