Easter

This is a little late in coming, but better late than never.  Every year we've gone over to a friend's house for Easter, and every year they do the same thing.  Tell the Easter story for all the kids and then do an Easter egg hunt in their back yard.  Now their kids are teenagers, but they've done it so often that they can't NOT do it.  So all of us with little kids gather anyways, and the Taylors organize a fantastic afternoon.  Their own teenage kids (and other teenagers) help out.  Eva and Gabe participated this year, and collected their own stash of candy.

Subway Expansion

When Subway first expanded outside of North America in 1984, do you know the first place a franchise was opened?  I'll give you one guess.



I hope you didn't guess anything other than Bahrain.   The picture above was posted by Subway Arabia's facebook page.  I don't know where this is, but now I'm curious to try and find it.

Bahrain by Bahrain

As a history geek, I am always on the lookout for books or websites on the history of Bahrain. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot in English, and the books in English I do find are often long, expensive and dry. Not only that, they are rarely by Bahrainis. Often they are written historians and archaeologists who have come to Bahrain.

To my great delight, I found out that my friend Ahmed is working on a translation project doing just that. He is taking a history of Bahrain written by a well respected Bahraini historian and translating it into English. Even better, he is doing translating bit by bit and publishing it on his blog. You can see it here at Ahmed's Translations.

Cover of the Book: Masjid Al-Khamees (Khamees Mosque)

The first translation post is about Khamis mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Bahrain. In fact, this mosque is just up the road from us and we drive by it relatively frequently. Check back to the blog every once in a while (or subscribe, like I've done) to read more about the history of Bahrain. By Bahrainis.

Good Friday

Today is the day when many Christians celebrate the death of Jesus (I say many because orthodox believers will celebrate Easter next week).  There is lots to say about why Jesus died, but I would like to just leave two parts of a document called the Heidelberg Catechism: 

Why did Christ have to go all the way to death?  Because God's truth and justice demanded it: only the death of God's perfect Son could pay for the shame of our sin. 

What advantage do we receive from Christ's sacrifice and death on the cross? Through Christ's death our old selves are crucified, put to death, and buried with Him, so that the evil desires of the flesh may no longer rule us, but that instead we may dedicate ourselves as an offering of gratitude to Him. 

But Good Friday - the day of Christ's death - is only good because of Easter Sunday.  As the old preaching cadence reminds... it's Friday, but Sunday's a comin'!