Worldwide Fast and Easter Weekend

Good Friday before Easter was a special day as we participated in a Worldwide Fast, initiated by our prophet President Nelson.  He has asked that we all put our faith into action and fast for relief of Covid—relief financially, relief from the virus and death, and for the strength and support of hospital staff and getting the supplies (everyone all over the world and country are making masks to use and donate to the hospitals because all the regular and online stores are sold out). 

It was our second time fasting as a church, but this time we were hoping that friends of other faiths would join us.  And they did!  Our whole family fasted all day!  I think it was Rhea's first time fasting all day—we were so proud of her!

Saturday, I went for a walk and found the Easter Bunny making his way around our neighborhood in social distancing style!  I hadn't seen the Easter Bunny yet so that was fun.  And with the restrictions placed on us with Covid, we just did our own little Easter egg hunt inside our apartment.  I gave everyone a little Easter bag of chocolate too, so we had plenty of sugar to get us through the weekend.  😉  

The egg hunt:

 The best chocolates ever from our favorite store, Aldi.  European chocolates!

On Sunday, we woke up to tulips outside our door given by someone anonymously.  They were beautiful, and we loved that someone was thinking of us during this quarantine period.  Along with the tulips was an Easter basket that Rhea received for participating in the Falls Green Easter egg hunt on Saturday around our apartment complex.  They had egg signs in 12 different places, and in order to get the basket, you had to take pictures of each sign and tell where you found them.

After finding these surprises, we had a nice Sacrament meeting.  I had everyone watch a short video by Emily Freeman and David Butler about one of the people that was close to the Savior and his interaction with them before or after his resurrection.  We had a wonderful discussion about Thomas, Simon that carried Jesus' cross, Mary Magdelene, and the apostles on the Road to Emmaus.

We then hurried to make a zoom call with the whole Platt family.  Everyone except Amelia joined in.  We had mom and dad Platt calling from Oregon, us calling from D.C., Gordon and family calling in from Tel Aviv, Sara in Oregon, Allison in Arizona, and Shauna and Lisa's families calling from Utah.   G-ma and G-pa asked each family to share a song and testimony. Then Grandpa and Grandma Platt gave a thought and we ended the call to each have our own Sacrament.  There were technical difficulties with working Grandma and Grandpa's zoom, but luckily they worked it out.  It was a wonderful meeting to enhance the quality and "specialness" of our Easter.
 Later that night, we had a call with the Buckwalters which was more of just a fun checkup that Uncle Scott set up. We all talked about how we were doing and we got to see Peyton and Jake's new baby Leo.  The boy cousins (Thomas, Ryder, Hudson, Blake, and Bryson) enjoyed chatting and planning their get together to play games online later that week.  😉

That afternoon we got to teach Grandpa B how to use Zoom and practiced with him to make sure it would work.  We had a great chat, and then later that night, we had a call with Grandpa again and all of mom's siblings and their families, which was more of just a fun checkup that Uncle Scott set up. We all talked about how we were doing and we got to see Peyton and Jake's new baby Leo.  The boy cousins (Thomas, Ryder, Hudson, Blake, and Bryson) enjoyed chatting and planning their get together to play games online later that week.  😉  It was a great day!