An Eggcelent Easter.

This Easter really was fantastic.

Holy Week in the Dominican Republic is r

eally a country wide celebration. They are not used to our Easter traditions but because all of the kids in the country were out of school we were able to spend a lot of time with all of them.

We had Easter celebrations in Rio San Ju

an and in Bobita.

In Rio San Juan we dyed eggs. They loved it. Evan and Rachel were not back yet from Santiago (

WELCOME CONNOR!!) so Jill and I were able to do the Easter celebration with the Princesas and Pescadores.

They loved it a lot, but I think the thing they were most excited about was eating the boiled egg after.

In Bobita we had an egg hunt. We actually waited until the Wednesday after Easter to do it so that all of the kids would be here but it was great fun.

They do not usually do egg hunts but we combined that typical tradition from the United States with a typical Dominican Easter food “habichuelas con dulce”. These “sweet beans” are an unusual food but the Dominicans love them. Carmen, our summer cook, made them for us and the kids had a lot of fun finding eggs and eating their sweet beans.

The most touching experience during all of this Easter celebration came in Rio San Juan. The kids had dyed their eggs and were ready to eat them. But there was something missing. Dominicans really love salt on their boiled eggs. Some of them had already eaten an egg when Anderson and Yanifer come back into the Outreach Center with a huge jar of salt to share with everyone. Anderson is on of our Pescadores who will be attending Manna Christian School in the fall and Yanifer is his little sister, one of our Princesas. It was a sweet (and salty) thing to experience. These are the kinds of things that makes our work worth it and allows us to see the potential each of them have to grow.