A Very Special Easter

How did you celebrate Easter? Keith and I celebrated in a hotel on the Catalonian coast of Spain. No, we were not on vacation. We were at the first face-to-face CBF Europe Team gathering since COVID struck. Part of our time overlapped with CBF's Africa/Middle East Team. We were blessed to have them organize Easter Sunday worship.

Testimonies came from members of both teams. Jeff Lee sent us all this image of the risen Christ. Paintings like this often appears in the Orthodox churches of N. Macedonia, where he and his wife Alicia serve. 

Musicians from both teams led music. (Note: some of the members of the Africa/Middle East Team cannot have their names or images published.)

Paul Baxley, executive coordinator of CBF and a gifted speaker, shared how Easter happened While it was still dark. We had talked about darkness in our team gatherings in the days before Easter.  Some of us work directly with refugees, now mostly from Ukraine but also from places like Syria. Some of grew up in places like Columbia, where (to reference another famous sermon) Sunday never comes; it's always Friday. 

Dr. Baxley reminded us that "Jesus comes to His people while it is still dark." Jeff's picture shows Jesus rescuing people from hell. It doesn't get much darker than that.  

Then we broke bread together.

And after we shared the bread and the wine/grape juice, we broke bread together again at a traditional Catalonian restaurant.  

We pray your Easter was as blessed as ours!

Women's Voices--Resurrection!

This Sunday our sisters and brothers in Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and other places who follow the Julian calendar will be celebrating Easter. One year, when I visited Moldova in April, I got to celebrate Easter twice!

My friends in Romania tell me that every year a film about Jesus comes on TV at this time. This year it will be Magdalena, the story of Jesus told by Mary Magdalene to a group of women. 

That is very encouraging to us. Here you see Keith at the Operation Mobilisation Center outside of Brussels recording the voice of Magdalena for the Flemish version of this film. The smiling lady is Magdalena. The thoughtful-looking man also speaks Flemish as his first language and is "proof-listening." 

Keith was part of a team that recorded the voices for Magdalena, the Story of Jesus for Children, and the Jesus film all in Flemish, all in 2 weeks' time. Flemish and the Dutch Keith and I learned are different dialects of the same language. As we were recording, we discovered how different!

These films all exist in the standard Dutch of the Netherlands. But at the review, one of the Flemish-speakers said, "This is the first time I've heard a Christian film in Flemish. I was surprised by how much it really touched me."

Perhaps you would like to watch one of these films in your own language, too? https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch.html