Passover, Unleavened Bread & First Fruits

Praise Yeshua (Jesus), our Redeemer, our Salvation...

Passover is a celebration commanded by God. It commemorates the escape of His chosen people, the Israelites, from Egypt and Yhwh's protection from the Angel of Death. Yhwh's perfect timing caused Yeshua to become our salvation as He again saved us from eternal death on Passover.

Our small fellowship celebrated the Passover together again this year. We've kind of been taking turns leading the celebration and this year it was the Martin's turn.

As the lady of the house, I got to light the candles to start off the celebration.

Teri carves the lamb as we look on.

Paul &Sarah

The kids dipping the celery.

David Martin breaking the unleavened bread.

Children are an important part of the Passover service. In Exodus 12:26 & 13:8, God specifically tells us to explain to them what and why we are celebrating. Traditionally this is done by having the kids ask questions during the dinner.

Below Benjamin is asking his question with a little help from Quentin.

Caleb, reading his question.

Joshua

Passover starts the feast of Unleavened Bread. For seven days His people are to eat no leaven. This is to remind us of when His people had to rush out of Egypt so fast they didn't have time to raise their bread. I have gotten into the habit of making challah bread on Friday evenings to start our weekly Shabbat. Friday is Anna's day to cook and she is in the habit of making pizza every Friday evening. Because we were in the midst of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, she made unleavened pizza and I made a special unleavened bread with a little cinnamon and sugar spread on for fun.
The day after the Shabbat during the week of Unleavened Bread is the First Fruits celebration. We are commanded to wave the first fruits of our harvest in thanks to Yhwh on this day. As believers in Yeshua it is important to note that He rose on the celebration of First Fruits. It is a beautiful picture of His resurrection. The First to be resurrected to eternal life. We celebrated at Regina's house (she has a huge living room) with dancing and dinner.

Lavonne watching the little kids take a turn with the flags.

That's me in the dress, keeping up with the youngsters. Not only did we have a great time of worship, but it's really good exercise too!

Afternoon at Keys Point

We took an impromptu trip up the lake. It was a gorgeous day and the sun was shining brilliantly on the lake so we decided to go up and visit Cam & Nicole's cabin. We babysit baby Hazel for Cam & Nicole and they're building a cabin up at Keys Point, a 15 mile ride up the lake.

Before we could go, we had to do a little maintenance on one of our snowmachines :) and unhook the tobaggon load of wood Paul and the kids had hauled in.

We all piled onto three snow machines and Quentin drove Cam & Nicole's ATV. They needed to get it up to their cabin before the lake thaws so they'll have it there for the summer.

Quentin on the Honda and Joshua driving for he and Deborah on the snowmachine.

Abigail & Anna on the snowmachine pulling David, Benjamin & Caleb.

My self portrait with Paul and Sarah is tucked in between us.

She stayed pretty snug, but her hat kept sliding off.

Igiugig means the place between waters. We live on Six Mile Lake and the Igiugig between it and Lake Clark stays open all year. We hugged the snow and ice that are still remaining to stay out of the water and off the sand.
This pressure crack stretches across the width of the lake. It was easy to find the best spot to cross. The trail we were on is used so much it's like a highway and we just followed the tracks others have made.

When we got to Keys Point, Paul pointed out some wolf tracks to me.

Cam & Nicole's cabin sits right on the lake. When they are able to get up and work on their cabin, they live in the shed in the middle while they work on the main cabin. The shed on the right is used for storage.
It was our first trip to their cabin so the first thing we did was nose around and check everything out.

The wood stove in the little shed.

The bucket for washing clothes in the storage shed.

Next the boys gathered wood for a fire. Here's David carrying a log almost as big as he is.

Caleb's doing his share.

They had the fire going on the beach and in no time we were all sitting or lying down and relaxing around it.

The beach in front of their cabin is all small pebbles. The little ones filled their pockets full. Below Sarah is showing Abigail her treasures.
The boys worked on their rock throwing skills. It quickly became a game where they threw to hit a large boulder so that the rock would skip as far as possible past it onto the ice of the lake.
They were concentrating so hard that they screwed up their faces as they threw. I caught them all looking goofy at once.
We tried to get a good family picture. I set the camera on a tiny tripod on the beach and let it run, then I snipped it to make a picture when we were all looking.

The sun started going behind the trees so the light wasn't great for the pictures on the lake.

Joshua jumping for joy.

I had a hard time getting everyone to hold still. (It could have had something to do with Paul throwing snowballs at them.)

He's still at it...

It finally broke out into a huge snowball fight!

Joshua

Joshua making another snowball before Deborah or Quentin hit him with one.

Benjamin eating snow.

Quentin

Loading up the sled and snowmachines to head home.

The ride home was beautiful.

Paul and I pulled the sled on the way home. The kids bundled up tight to keep the snow from blowing on them.
Just before we got back to Nondalton we stopped to look at two fishing holes. They have a net spread beneath the two holes. Apparently they have been catching a lot of delicious fish.

Joshua turns 10

Cake & Ice cream! We love birthdays. Joshua turned 10.

Lavonne's Aunt Dorothy made a delicious strawberry cake.

We had the piniata inside. There wasn't much room to swing so we limited the hits and Quentin opened up the box and threw the candy.
Joshua has been very interested in bows and arrows so he got a bow for his birthday. He has peaked all of the guys' interest and they are spending time on the lake shooting arrows at a target.
Happy Birthday to my wonderful, loveable son. May Yhwh bless you this year of your life as you grow closer to Him.