Easter With My Famo Family

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The sun glimmered brightly through the open door as I pushed the blanket away from my face. A fire crackled in the middle of the room and Rhona's sister-in-law sat beside it tending a pot of sweet potatoes. Smoke wafted up towards the rafters and the grass roof. Everything smelled alive and wild and new. Elemental like earth and water and fire. I pulled in a deep breath, feeling life tingle in every part of me. Easter. The reminder that my Savior didn't stay in the tomb but rose from the dead. Because He lives I could live and because He came to rescue me I came to Papua New Guinea. It was almost too much. I stared at the ceiling beams and listened to the sounds of the household waking up.

Soon I willed myself to get up and wash. Today I would be going back home after the morning church service. The sun was bright and the sky new washed like a blue cloth pulled over the tented sky. I sat on a rock to warm myself as the rest of the family bustled around getting ready for church or washing little ones or preparing food. I smiled. Only in God's story could I feel myself and home and at one with people so different than my birth culture. And yet, I did. I felt I was home and with family rather than in a different country with new friends. I thanked God as we walked to church and once again settled on the grass under the tent.



I listened with barely contained joy as the tent filled with mingled harmonies of a worship song in the local dialect. Voices raised to our God and Savior, our Father and Lord. We were one, not many, the family of God, not different clans and ethnicities. We were all rejoicing that Jesus came and died for us to remove our blood guilt and take our punishment. And that more than that, he'd conquered death, come back from the grave and lived to give us hope of eternal life beyond physical death. I gazed out at the hills and the sky and over the heads of my brothers and sisters from Famo and I thanked God for Easter and for this chance to celebrate it with my new family.

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