Open Arms Egg Hunt provides 10,000 Easter eggs for eager “hunters”

 

[March 31, 2024] 

Saturday’s sunny weather provided a perfect day for Open Arms Christian Fellowship Church to host their annual Easter Egg hunt. This year was the second Easter Egg hunt at their campus on the Lincoln Christian University grounds.

Open Arms Pastor Larry Crawford said they have hosted an Easter Egg hunt for around seven or eight years. Several of the hunts were at Scully Park. It is one of the many ways the church reaches out to the community.

Around 8:30 Saturday morning, Children’s Pastor Lara O’Donoghue said numerous volunteers started setting up barricades. Over 10,000 eggs inside throughout three separate sections of the former LCU soccer field. Though setting out the eggs was done in less than an hour, planning for the hunt started months ago.

It takes a lot of volunteers to fill the eggs with candy and O’Donoghue said she is thankful to people at the Christian Village who assisted with that part.

What may have been close to one thousand people showed up for the event. Families gathered just outside the field to the left of the chapel with children eagerly waiting for the hunt to start.

As always, there were three age groups for children: two-year-olds through pre-kindergarten, kindergarten through second grade and third through fifth grade.

These groups were released one at a time to gather up as many eggs as they could in just a few minutes.

Besides gathering eggs, kids had the chance to visit or pose for photos with the Easter Bunny.

Once the children had gathered all their eggs, they quickly and excitedly opened them to find what was inside.

Most eggs had individual pieces of candy. In addition, several other eggs had pieces of paper inside that showed special prizes the bearer had won. The young hunters and gatherers could take those papers to tables near the chapel and redeem them for the prizes.

O’Donoghue said there were nearly 150 full-sized candy bars and 300 $5-bills given out as prizes plus a few large Easter baskets. In each age group, one child won a bicycle.

With the beautiful weather, everyone appeared to be having a great time at this year’s Open Arms Easter Egg Hunt.

[Angela Reiners]