Easter fun

We have been very busy these last several weeks getting ready for our Easter Egg Hunt with Hills of Grace and for Easter Sunday. It has been so neat to see people in our church family getting excited about reaching others in our community. And these past few weeks they have put their feet and hands to work. The southern Baptist churches all over the U.S. were doing a big push for Easter this year. The Baptist convention made some really good commercials of people testimonies of what Christ has done in their lives. On the commercial people are told to go to findithere.com to find out more about Christ or to locate a church in their area. Along with the commercials they sent to us really good finding Jesus info pamphlets and bags. The idea was for the churches to prayer walk in their communities while putting these bags on people's doors. So that's what we did. We made these three things, had them printed, and put these in the bag with the pamphlet.

We wanted them to know a little about our church, invite them to the Easter Egg Hunt, and to Easter worship on Sunday. We went to 3000 homes and put these on doors and prayer walked too. We also sent a mailer out. Then we stuffed 3000 eggs with candy, had a bunch of gift cards and prizes donated for giveaways, and prayed for the lost in our community to come so we could connect with them.

So Saturday morning we woke up and it was really windy, with ominous looking clouds and cold. We weren't sure if many people would come and decided to set up indoors in the school because the wind was so bad. Well, while we were setting up, the sun came out about 45 minutes before we were to start and the wind calmed down! And then the people started coming.... and coming.... and coming. The school parking lot was full, and there were people EVERYWHERE! Our small group of about 30 people doing all the work were not prepared for the 800-900 people that showed up. WOW! It was amazing! We were able to talk to a lot of people and it was so much fun! Several of the people in our church who helped a lot with the prayer walking and hanging the bags on the doors said, "I am so thankful that my feet and legs hurt from walking 5 miles to put those bags on people's doors. If just one person comes to Christ because of it, then next year I'll walk 10 miles. "

The Easter Egg hunt was great, we needed about 5000 more eggs but now we know better for next year. We gave away a lot of cotton candy and popcorn and people enjoyed letting their kids take pictures with the Easter bunny. We even had several families come to church this morning after we met them yesterday. Please keep praying that God would be working in the lives of those who need to know Him and for Him to allow us opportunities to connect with those people. We are praying that more will come next Sunday for Easter.

Here is a picture slideshow of the preparation and Easter egg hunt.