Incredible Day of Celebration

I can't fully express how blessed I was by the day of worship we had for Palm Sunday, but I will try. But first, I'll confess.

I make decisions based on data and prayer. So, when looking at worship times for Palm Sunday and Easter, I spent a lot of time reviewing numbers from last year, especially our children's. After talking with Katie, we felt it was best to have two services so that a new family felt the children's space was manageable.

As Palm Sunday came, I felt anxious. Did I make the right decision? Although I had too many chairs in the worship space (which I'll fix for Easter), the children's space was just right! The volunteers and staff had just the right number of kids. We had new families, and their kids got the full experience without being one in a crowd!

Between the two services, we had more this year than we did the past 2 years.

A huge thank you to the many hands who came out on Saturday to help set up Grace Place for lunch and everyone who helped clean up.

One of our long-standing members stopped me at lunch, excited to see Grace Place full of people. He said he couldn't remember the last time he saw so many people participating in a potluck. Around 100 people stayed or came back to eat with us! As usual, there was more than enough food for everyone, and it was a great time to get to know one another.

For the second year now, I have been amazed by the church's generosity in collecting eggs for the egg hunt. No child goes home without an overflowing basket of eggs, which is such a wonderful image of God's love.

One of our new families mentioned how much she appreciated the spirit of our hunt. Her family attended a larger one last year, and all the kids went on a mad dash for eggs. Because there were so many kids, it seemed like a competition for each child.

However, our kids work together in gatherings because they are okay with getting enough. I saw another mother worried that one of the kids had just started hunting as everyone finished up. She was about to begin taking eggs from her son's basket when the mother assured her that her daughter's basket was also overflowing. There was so much joy and a sense of community!

I loved watching the kids go down the slide. The weather was too cool to turn the water on, but that didn't slow them down. The adults had such a good time talking that we completely forgot to pull out the corn hole. I am sure deeper connections within the church family and new friends were made on this spring day.