Celebrating Easter with Like-Hearted Friends

Below is what I posted last year the night before the Easter Egg Hunt. Tomorrow is the day of our Easter Egg Hunt for 2008 (I guess it is turning out to be annual :)). We combined forces with another church this year and it is going to be awesome.

Last year we stuffed 3,000 eggs. This year we upped it to 6,000 stuffed eggs and 1,600 resurrection eggs to be made by the kiddos. We have 640 hotdogs and buns, 40 2 liters donated by Pepsi and 504 individual bags of chips!!

What a joy to be able to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior with another denomination of believers. I wish life was like this all of the time. . .all working together for the same Lord. We spend so much time trying to "one up" the other and make our church out to be the best when in reality THE Church is the bride of Christ. Not First THIS or Fellowship THAT but THE CHURCH is the bride of Christ!! What a glorious day it will be when He comes back for us all.

This year, I planned with my same friend from last year as well as another Type A friend and boy we had a great time. We all laugh about being Type A and I am glad that we can laugh about it rather than cry. They are some of the most amazing people I know. We all have little kids and battle illness, schedules, jobs and just being a mom but when we all work together we can accomplish amazing results. These are the spiritual and non-spiritual things I am celebrating today in a nutshell an eggshell:

• First, my relationship with my Lord and Savior, who rescued me from the mud and mire who gave His life for mine (not an equal trade, by the way)
  

• my awesome family who values relationship with each other (obviously they are not teenagers yet)

For the EEH:

• all of the donations and at cost things we got
• the smooth communication with so many people working together
• my friends who have helped out and the fact that we are all still friends
• the two church's spirits and all that they have accomplished with their hard working hands
• the use of the fairgrounds (free) and the fact that we have an indoors as well as outdoors

There are so many things to be thankful for this Good Friday,
but mostly His death and work on the cross!
Thank you Jesus, may we honor you in all we do and say!

Friday, April 6, 2007

"Twas the Night Before the Easter Egg Hunt"

Twas the Night Before the Easter Egg Hunt
And all through the house
not a creature was stirring
Not even a spouse.

The Easter Eggs Were Stuffed
At the fairgrounds with care
In hopes that good weather and children will be there.

The weatherman has said that the degree will be high forty
And I am thinking oh Lordy Lordy!

As you can see, we are preparing for an Easter Egg Hunt. Myself and a friend from church were both burdened for the kids in the community that they would have a place to hear the real reason why we celebrate Easter. The downtown area in our community celebrates the holiday by putting hay on the concrete and hiding the eggs under the hay. That sounded a little scratchy and not so fun, so we decided not to join them this year.

This planning process has been such a faith stretcher for me and my friend. We are both Type A so it made it interesting-both very detail oriented-down to making special eggs for the 1 and 2 year olds so that they would have candy that they can really eat.

We received donations for a lot of the supplies. We have a friend that works for "Ideal or Flowers" bread company who donated hotdog buns, Walmart gave a $25 gift card, a local butcher gave us hot dogs at cost. Also, our church gave us a small budget to work with for missions. Not to mention, our precious people at the church stuffed almost 3,000 eggs with candy. They also donated 1,000 eggs to make "Resurrection Eggs" for the kids to make their own version. Isn't that amazing. Next year my goal is to not have to pay for the chips or the chocolate candy that we are having for "dessert."

What a joy to see all of this come to fruition. One of the biggest faith stretchers was to find the location. Obviously, we have no church building since we currently meet at the middle school. We needed a place with an indoor area as a rain contingency and craft area. We also needed a place with plumbing! My friend suggested the fairgrounds. We were told that we may could get a discount, but we would have to go to the board meeting. So she and I show up scared to death because we don't know anyone and who knows what goes on at a fairground board meeting. We let them know that we were doing this for the community, not just for the people in our church and they said we could use it for free since it was a community event. That was a green light for us that we were headed in the right direction. So we have 300 hotdogs, almost 3,000 stuffed eggs, 1,000 "Resurrection Eggs" to be taken home, and some great Story Tellers lined up to tell the story of Christ and his last week on Earth and the hope that we can have in Him.

What an awesome day today preparing for all of the kids. I need to get some rest because tomorrow we get to see how the First "Maybe Annual" Easter Egg Hunt turns out. I will update you soon.

What are your best Easter memories as a family?