Community Easter Egg Hunt

To say this past weekend was an amazing, unexpected, baffling moment is an understatement.

We hosted our first Easter Egg Hunt in our community neighborhood. We hired our highschool neighbor friend to flyer all 515 homes in our community the weekend before our event.

Without having any idea how many kids would show up, we purchased 288 eggs and stuffed them with candy, toys, quarters, dollar bills and prize tickets. Initially, we only bought 144 eggs, but we talked things through and thought it might be a better idea to have left over eggs than not enough so we ordered another round of eggs. One neighbor down the street donated about 50 more to our pile. Little did we know that decision to double our egg count would still not have us prepared for what was about to happen at the event.

The hunt was to begin at 9:30am on Saturday. At about 9:15am, there were about 10 kids at the park with their parents. I thought to myself, “well, not many kids are coming out, but these guys are going to have an awesome time with all the eggs out there!” Then literally, before I could even process what happened – out of the droves came villages of families ready for the egg hunt. About 250 people came out for our puny, first time, little egg hunt.

One word: Chaos.

Fun chaos though! The hunt only took about 30 seconds – then BAM – the eggs were gone! No kids cried, no complaints came from any of the parents whose kid scrambled to get only 1 egg because there simply wasn’t enough. All we got once the hunt was over were humble thank you’s, sincere gratitude for hosting something like this in a community that has no community, and people asking when are we doing our next event for the neighborhood.

Community.  Relationship.  We are made to want it, made to have it, made to do life with others.  We’re not made to be alone.

This event was a beautiful reminder for me of the community and life Jesus wants to have with us, and us with others.  We have such a wonderful friend in Him and I can’t bare seeing others feel alone, helpless, and without hope.  If a plastic egg with horrible processed chocolate stuffed inside it can brake a barrier with a neighbor for me to have the opportunity to bless them – I would do this every day for that person to know Jesus.  Wouldn’t you?