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!

Snow in April... Lots of it!

We had an unusually mild winter. I don't think we had more than 4 inches of snow on the ground at any time all winter and that only happened a couple of times. Below are some pictures of the kids out climbing trees on a beautiful December day.

Anna and Sarah

Deborah carrying Sarah on the rope swing, while Quentin is making his way up the frozen creek.

Sarah climbing her first tree.

Quentin

Deborah

Today, April 4th, we woke up to gently falling snow. We got together with the other believers in town and celebrated Jesus' Resurrection. We had a great time of praise and worship as we celebrated what God calls First Fruits. It is an intriguing study (Leviticus 23) to see how God lined up His appointed times before time began. First Fruits falls on the day after the Sabbath after Passover. Jesus rose on First Fruits and the apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15 how Jesus is the First Fruit of creation.

As I write this, too late at night, it is still snowing and it did not stop all day. When the kids measured it about four hours ago, we had 8 inches. I'm sure it will be close to a foot by morning and after looking at the forecast, Paul says it could continue for a few more days!

Deborah in that same tree that was sunny and snowless in December.

Anna

Abigail

Tia

If you look to the right, past the apartments, you'll see our airplane collecting snow. Paul is planning on making a trip to Anchorage this week to do some grocery shopping. His plan is to take off on the lake and then park the airplane up at the airfield when he returns in anticipation of the lake thawing. He wasn't counting on all of this snow. The kids will have a fun time sledding behind the snow machines to make a nice packed runway on the lake for him.