Church egg hunt, Celin Record

Celina churches join forces to host annual Easter egg hunt Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com Mar 24, 2016 If you’ve never witnessed children converging en masse on a soccer field dotted with thousands of brightly colored plastic eggs, you may want to visit Old Celina Park on Saturday morning. The park, at 12670 FM 428 in Celina, is once again serving as the location for the fourth-annual Big Hunt event. If last year’s egg hunt provided any indication, it is likely that several hundred children will participate in this weekend’s event which is again being sponsored by One Voice, a nonprofit coalition comprised of four Celina churches. The group includes Lifeway Church, Celina Bible Church, First Baptist Church and Grace Baptist Church. Other area churches have also previously participated with the organization. “All of the churches in Celina are really a part of it,” explained Lifeway Church Pastor Craig Walker. “We’ve agreed we’re just going to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ with one voice. … We love each other and support each other and we try to build a great ministry.” Walker said the Big Hunt serves as “a tangible demonstration of God’s love through the church to this community.” Also, “We try to make it a fun deal and serve all the families and children in our community,” he said. “We do invite people … to go to one of the churches in the community. … Our goal is to say, `Hey, God loves you and we’re here to serve you and we hope that you’ll go to church somewhere on Easter.’” Last year, the churches and their congregations donated about 20,000 candy-filled eggs for the egg hunt. Walker said churches this year asked members to donate a few thousand more eggs, which they have been collecting for several weeks. Teams of volunteers will arrive at the park about an hour before the event to spread the eggs across the field, as well as set up bounce houses, slides and games for youngsters “so they’ll have fun things to do besides just the egg hunt.” Walker said the hunt will likely kickoff around 10:15 a.m. “It’s amazing if you get to see the event,” he said. “We literally cover the soccer field at Old Celina Park (with eggs) and kids surround this thing.” Egg hunters are separated into two groups: infant through preschool age, and kindergarten through fifth grade. “When we turn those kids loose, it looks like a vacuum cleaner sweeping across the field because (the kids) move across slowly,” Walker said. “There’s a sea of eggs in front of them and then, as they go along (collecting the eggs), there’s nothing behind them.” Follow the Celina Record on Twitter @celinarecord.