[Kara] Easter in Laos

It is Easter night in Laos.  If we had been home for Easter, we'd be feasting on candy plus ham and potatoes dauphinoise and asparagus.  We'd have daffodils in a vase on the table.

This year, Easter also happens to coincide with General Conference weekend, which is the once-every-six-months that we Mormons don't go to church on Sunday, but stay home and watch it on TV (or the computer).  So if we had been home today, it would not only have been a particularly relaxing, indulgent day, but also a spiritual day as we listened to hours of uplifting talks from our prophet and other church leaders.  The messages in General Conference are always very Christ-centered, but I'm sure they will be even more so on Easter.  (The verb tense to use here is awkward.  For me, it's Easter night, but in the U.S. it is very early Easter morning.)

Laos has a very small number of Christians, and I have seen no Christian churches or any other signs of Christians during our three days in the city of Luang Prabang.  There are absolutely no indications of Easter here--not even secular Easter symbols--no candy, no colored eggs or pastel rabbits.

We woke up early this morning to watch hundreds of local monks collect food donations from the townsfolk, in a beautiful act of charity that takes place every single day.  (You can read Seth's post about the wet market here to see pictures of the monks receiving their offerings.)  We visited five or six Buddhist temples today with our tour guide (yes, I lost count), plus caves filled with (literally) thousands of Buddha statues.  So we were very churched--OVER churched, in fact.  But these Buddhist temples didn't bear any resemblance to the Christian churches I'm used to, and on Easter Sunday that contrast felt particularly stark.  I'm afraid I wasn't interested in learning about Buddha today.  I wanted to think about Jesus Christ and the joy and comfort I find in His message of hope and His atoning sacrifice for me.

We did track down a couple of candy bars (two Mars Bars and a package of M&Ms) to be our Easter candy.  And our hotel has two resident rabbits, so the kids were particularly interested in playing with them today.

Our Easter dinner was sticky rice, fried rice, spring rolls, fried noodles, beef stirfry . .  and pizza (for Cannon).  It was delicious, and not too far out of our comfort zone.  But it didn't feel like Easter dinner. 

I am surprised by how much I've missed our family traditions and the support of my church community today.  When I wake up in the morning, I am looking forward to seeing my American friends' Easter greetings and to reading the Christ-centered messages from General Conference.  I'm hoping to capture more of the Easter spirit on Easter Monday.