April 09, 2007

Monks and Easter

No I didn't take this picture, but the scene we saw Easter morning didn't look much different (except it was a little brighter).
Our church decided to have a special sunrise Easter service in a local park. We planned to start church at 7 AM. However when we arrived at the park, I thought to myself, uh-oh because there were scores of cars lined up with Buddhists donating food to the monks in order to gain merit. This is something that happens every morning but I had never seen that many monks collecting food before, usually it is just a few. The reason there we so many monks and people was that we were meeting in was located near 2 important temples. People from all over town come to donate food to monks in these 2 temples.
I was thinking, oh my, what are we going to do???? Where were we going to have services???? But in the end, everything happened according to plan and we had a great time. We had 35 people in attendance, not bad for a 7 am start. We praise God for the wonderful day of fun and fellowship after too.
I will post some more pictures of our Easter service next time.

1 comment:

JWo said...

The pic reminded me of a recent film I saw, Luther, where the church used to collect money so that you can gain merit and entrance to heaven.