We’ve been asked by our church leaders to focus more on preparing for a Christ-centered Easter, by treating it as a sacred season of preparation rather than just a single day. We have been encouraged to focus on the Savior’s final week, from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection, through prayer, study, and service. As we focus on the Resurrection, may we emphasize the “good news” of the Atonement and the promise of eternal life.

I love Easter every bit as much or more than Christmas. We can’t have one without the other. Birth, Death, Resurrection it’s all in God plan for us. As part of our geographical church unit known as a “stake”. Our stake is comprised of 11 “wards” but this can vary with each different geographical stake. A ward is our own smaller geographical congregation that we attend each week. There can be anywhere from 400 - 600 people in a ward unit, so that tells you how large a stake can be.

This year our stake will be holding a special meeting on the evening of Palm Sunday to commemorate and celebrate the last week of the Savior’s life. We will be featuring 12 vignettes, beginning with His entry through the Triumphal Arch with the waving of palm leaves. I have been asked to help make this happen. We’ll have people from the stake dressed in biblical type clothing from the time period who will help portray the people in each vignette. I have over 140 costumes from other church activities I’ve done over the past 20 years that we will be using. I will do a full blog post with pictures of what we come up with in a few weeks. This post shows some of the things I’ve been working on for the past two weeks to prepare.

When I was asked, we had a little over month to prepare and the clock is ticking fast! We have some lovely talented people who live in our stake that are building the Triumphal Arch, Three Crosses, Two Tombs, a 20’ x 10’ mural of the Spirit World, music for each vignette, and many other things.

I have been busy putting together as much greenery, white flora, and green fauna as possible to arrange around the different sets being built. I’ve also been gathering and making props for the people in the stake who will be acting the parts. All these things are shown in the pictures.

Right now, it looks like a forest in my house! I’ll be glad to see this project to fruition and pray it looks as good as possible on a short time frame and shoestring budget. I wish I had an Olympic sized budget to go out and purchase all the olive trees, palm trees, and native looking faux grasses to pull this off but reality kicks in.

The greenery is “creative” and not necessarily of the old-world areas we are portraying, but the goal is to add a little more each year.

The plan is to do this on a yearly basis, and we’ll be adding to it each year to make it better. If anyone has any faux olive or palm trees you’d like to let me borrow on the 28th and 29th of March, please let me know!

As much as I would like to make this look like scenes from “The Chosen”, this first year will be a humble attempt to honor the Savior of the World. I love serving others, and I especially love serving Him through the gifts and talents He has blessed me with.

Tomorrow I will be working on creating a large rock for the Garden of Gethsemane using garden containers as my base, covered with plastic sheeting, a chicken wire frame over that, covering it with spray foam and smoothing it out to look like a rock. When it’s dry, I will sand or cut whatever needs to be shaped before painting it with “Rustoleum” stone spray paints.

I’ve never done this before, so wish me luck. I’m fairly confident it will work.

After this, I still have three more oil flasks to create out of air-dry clay for the five virgins who were prepared. I know we’re not supposed to wish bad luck to the other five who were not prepared with enough oil to get them through the night, but I must admit, I am grateful I only have to make five!

I am using plastic Christmas ornaments my friend gave me for the base part of these flasks and then adding a plastic floral water tube inside the opening of the ornament to create a foundation for the neck of the flask and the opening at the top. Once they are dry, I cut a cork to fit in the top. These will be tied on each woman’s belt. I love how they are turning out. I’ve also never made any of these before. They are primitive but look realistic to me.

My wish for you this week is to visualize Easter as a season instead of just one day, much like we do at Christmas. Even in the midst of my creative mess, I pulled my Easter decorations out yesterday and started putting them up. In a time of so much turmoil, I want to share a quote I heard yesterday. “Instead of looking for the bunny, may we search to find the lamb.” Just like Christmas, we can celebrate Santa as we focus on the Birth of Jesus. With Easter we can celebrate with bunnies and eggs as we focus on the more important gift of Eternal Life through the death and resurrection of our Savior. Because of Him, we can live again! It doesn’t matter what religion we are, are Christians, we can celebrate together the true gift and meaning of Easter!

Everyone is welcome to come; it’s not just for members of our church. It is a community celebration of Easter. You can message me for the address if you are interested in attending.

Have a wonderful week as you decorate you home and begin to prepare for the sacred Easter celebration of Jesus.

Love Ya, Les 😊

Faith

Palm Sunday and Easter