9:30. The alarm rings on a Sunday morning. I hit snooze, but soon enough we are up and eating pine nut cheesecake. Mmm.

10:45 ish. We check the schedule on the Catholic church’s door. We have a little over an hour until the Easter mass. We decide to go take pictures on the beach.

11:55. Back at the church, but there is no one there. Just one man dinking around on the other side of the flowers. We make a loop around the church to see if there is another door open, There isn’t.

12:01. A man comes across the street and asks us something. I tell him, yes, we’d like to attend an Easter service. He tells us to wait there and he’ll unlock the door.

12:20. Still sitting in the second to the front row, looking at the life-size bleeding Jesus on the cross, watching the two sacerdotes throw together an order of worship and get a tiny amount of sacrements ready. The three other non-locals who were waiting for something to happen have already left. We want to leave too. If the service ever starts, we are just going to make fools of ourselves by not knowing how to cross ourselves correctly. We laugh off the awkwardness in a whisper.

12:25. The sacerdotes are in the room off to the side singing/chanting. Then they walk out to the courtyard. That’s the last straw. We get our things and go. They say “buenas” as we walk out.

There was no more nervous laughing as we walked down the street, quickly so as to shake off the silence and uneasiness. I was mad. There had been seven Christians in that church for a few minutes that Easter morning, but there had been no gathering in the name of the resurrected Savior. Jesus was alive again and all we did was stare at a statue of his bloody body.

I missed my protestant church. At that moment, the congregation of Iglesia Prosperidad was overflowing and God’s word was being spoken with passion and conviction. At that moment, my parents were getting out of bed to go and attend the Easter sunrise service followed by a breakfast potluck. All over the world people were singing, “Christ the Lord is risen today,” and “Up from the grave he arose!”

It made me mad that no one, hardly even the sacerdotes, seemed to care that Jesus had really brought himself to liberating life again after being very violently dead for three days. Maybe they didn’t know. How deeply do I know this myself?

We went to the beach, ran in the water, screamed at it’s coldness, laughed and splashed, collected shells, then settled into the cliffside to warm in the sun. Alissa brought out her iPod and we celebrated the rising of the Son of God as the sun slowly set over a rising tide. At the top of our lungs, we sang Keith Green’s “Easter Song.” I hope that we didn’t bother the girls who were tanning topless twenty feet away.

We weren’t even to the trailhead and I could tell that something was going to have to change. It wasn’t just that my camera was too big to wear at my waist or that my shoes weren’t tied tight enough. It was that I was struggling to keep up with my friends, Rachel, Steven, and John. They just walked so fast. I felt the weight of my camelbak and sipped water, hoping that carrying the water inside of me rather than on my back would make me feel lighter. Each time that the group stopped to rest and take pictures, I had just enough time to catch up, and we were off again.

Stephen decided to walk behind me so that I wouldn’t be walking alone. That was really a good feeling, except that now the group was divided into two. “I’m sorry guys, I just can’t walk any faster.” I panted. “Unless we all slow down, we’re going to have to walk in two groups the whole way.” My friends let me set the pace. It was a pretty slow pace.

The mountain didn’t get any easier. Besides the vision of my fading leather shoes clumping one in front of the other, I don’t really remember much of the ascent to Siete Lagunas, our main landmark on the way up. We stopped there to eat oranges. I felt that nauseous feeling that you get when you are trying so hard to hold still while threading a needle that you forget to breath. I sat down with my head in my knees and dreaded the moment when I would have to stand up. I made myself drink. I was realizing how dehydrated I was.

The dreaded moment came, and we started the next stretch of the hike. The other part had been “easy” and this part was going to be hard. Added elevation, added wind, added snowfields and a dramatic decrease in temperature. The wind pounded at the scarf I had wrapped around my head and I longed to scream back at it. I might have if I had had the energy.

I was getting behind again, but my friends never let me walk alone. The peak, the highest point in Spain, Mulhacén, was in site now, but it was so far away. I told Stephen I wasn’t sure if I could make it. The next time we caught up with Rachel, I asked, “How are we doing on time? Because I can’t go any faster and if I’m not going to make it to the top at this speed, I need to find a rock to hide in while you guys make the ascent.”

Rachel looked at me seriously and said six words. “I think you can make it.”

And I did. Once Rachel said I could make it, I decided to quit thinking about not making it. I didn’t even stop. I walked so slow I didn’t have to. We made it to the top of Spain together. We sat in the 100 km wind at the top of Spain, 1.45 miles higher than where we had woke up that morning, under the bright blue sky. We felt triumphant as we read about the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.

Hosanna! It means, ‘oh save!’ and that’s what God does.

I had a great time hosting Alissa when she came to visit me over the past ten days. We put together this video to submit to a contest and to show you all how much fun we had.

Click here to watch the video.