Mountaintop Easter Sunrise

Unfortunately, I don't recall the actual Easter morning of the particular Holy Week I've been recounting here, but I do recall an Easter morning a few years later.

When planting churches, which is what comprised my parent's ministry, the early years usually consist of only a handful of believers, possibly even just the church planting team. We often would join with other groups of believers to celebrate Christ's resurrection.

I remember one Easter we celebrated in the province of Banaue. It's a part of the world unlike any other I've ever seen. It's in the northern part of Luzon, in the mountains; very remote and known for it's g-string wearing, beetle-juice spitting tribal people, the Ifugao, who primarily farmed rice. Rice farming necessitates flat terrain, so it's not the most conducive crop in mountainous regions. By hand, the Ifugao had carved numerous terraces into most of the entire mountain range (imagine the Shenandoah Mountains) to create rice field upon rice field. Such was the setting of an Easter sunrise service one year. We were on the top of a hill, maybe 30 of us, just our voices, no sound system, maybe a guitar or two. It was a serene environment as the sun crested over the mountains.

To celebrate the resurrected Lord, on a mountain top, at the crack of dawn, in the midst of a people group that practiced witchcraft and idol worship... it was a literal mountaintop Easter.