As the COVID-19 situation in Cambodia has improved we’ve been able to start attending in-person church again and have started attending the English language International Christian Fellowship. Before COVID-19 broke out we were attending Khmer language churches and we plan to get back to that as well, fortunately ICF meets in the afternoons so that leaves the mornings open.

The first Sunday in April, ICF hosted a Passover meal facilitated by Susan, who has had deep experience with a Messianic Jewish community in California and wrote a book on The Passover Celebration. It was very interesting to learn about the Passover symbolism in the Gospels, particularly in the Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection.

Instead of hunting for easter eggs, the girls joined in hunting for hidden leaven. This was represented by Bread that had risen with yeast. All of the leaven bread had to be removed from the premises before the Passover meal could begin. Susan explained that that leaven represented sin and that part of the Passover tradition was hunting for any leaven left in the house. I wondered how this informed later traditions like Easter Egg hunts and Shrove Tuesday. The girls seemed just as excited to run around and find something they couldn’t eat / play with as they had been to find sweet treats or little toys at Easter Egg hunts in the United States.

We invited Doungchann, Sokea, and Clivia to join us for the service. In our circle, Doungchann was selected as the leader and was the one to break the unleavened bread / initiate most of the ceremonies. Doungchann is a first generation Christian from rural Ba Phnom district, Prey Veng province and she seemed to find the Passover Ceremony very meaningful.

Susan substituted some local ingredients for some of the traditional ingredients. Bitter Melon instead of bitter herbs. Green papaya and banana instead of Charoset. The water for handwashing had kaffir lime slices and jasmine petals.

In a break from tradition, because there were so many of us, we only had the ceremonial meal in our circles in the sanctuary but had a full meal downstairs in the fellowship hall.

After the meal, we went back upstairs to finish the ceremony. The children had to find a half piece of unleavened bread that had been hidden earlier. Once they found it each circle’s leader had to negotiate a price to buy it from them.

This isn’t a complete outline of the Passover Ceremony, just some highlights, but I wanted to share as it was a meaningful event. It is so good to be able to meet with people in-person again after more than two years of pandemic. It was especially rewarding to have Doungchann, Sokea, and Clivia along and to see how the girls interacted with the ceremony.