What Easter means

Happy Easter! Christ is risen, He is risen indeed.

I had a wonderful Easter. After the service, everyone in the congregation stayed to have cake and coffee together and then in the afternoon, K and I went to the Roma community for our Sunday school program with kids. (We're a bit behind the church calendar in the storytelling though-- yesterday Gabriel was just telling Mary she is going to have a son.)

On the way to the Roma community, there was a large group of the girls waiting at a bus stop, so we were able to just pick them up on our way and take them back to the community-- and then they came to play with us. I had never seen them out like that before on a Sunday-- their parents had sent them out early in the morning to the Croat side of the city to beg after all the masses. We left around 2:30, so they had come from begging after the noon mass. This group of girls rarely beg (they are always working to collect plastic bottles from dumpsters), and they were embarrassed and wouldn't tell us where they had been.

Their teenage brothers, who can't beg because they are too old, came to the church service in the morning and had cake and coffee with us. They can't beg, because as K said, "They look too scary, people would be afraid that they would rob them." They couldn't beg from the rich Catholics on the west side of Mostar because they are too old, and so they could come to our evangelical church service on the Muslim side of Mostar. Life here can be so complicated...