Easter Giveaway & Blogging Break :-)
If you took part in the Facebook fun of my Spring Cleaning Week of giveaways, hop over to my page to see the winners announced. If you aren’t my FB friend, I’d love for you to be! Just click on the FB icon in my sidebar and send me a friend request!
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Hey bloggy sisters~
I’m posting today, offering an Easter giveaway and then I’m going to take a much-needed blogging break to focus on Holy Week with my family.
I want to slow down and savor the moments. I wasn’t sure if I’d have anyone who wanted to color eggs, but I do have one taker. (Thought I was going to need to grab some neighborhood kids!)
I can’t wait for our church’s resurrection celebration. We are trusting many hear about a new life with Jesus, because of the cross.
When we first began attending this church last spring, attendance was around 350. In one year, we’ve witnessed literally dozens of people decide to follow Christ and be baptized.
Homemakers, skeptical husbands, a woman who was a drug dealer, men addicted to pornography, indifferent middle-agers, sweet grandmas and searching teens. Now we are running over 700 each week and anticipate over 1,000 for Easter since that is how many we had at Christmas!!!
As our lead teaching pastor said yesterday, it is NEVER to be about the numbers but about the fact that many will hear about Jesus, the cross and the resurrection and as a result, lives will be changed for eternity! And what a humbling thought that God uses us as He changes lives—ours included!
And of course, I can’t forget my extended family get-together with all the aunts, uncles and cousins where my mom hosts her annual egg-hunt, now turned trivia contest with other whacky games for the teens that are excuses for her to love on her grandkids and load them up with candy!
Yes, I love Easter week.
I have been blessed with a man who is intentional in creatively teaching his kids about God. We’ve had M & M races, a lesson on the persecuted church given on a cold, hard cement floor in the dark by flashlight, & much more.
This week, our yard sports a large, wooden cross.
Passersby will see a sign change each day announcing just what happened on that particular day of Holy Week. From Palm Sunday (Jesus enters Jerusalem) to Maundy Thursday (Jesus shares the last supper with his 12 closest friends) to the darkness of Good Friday, the silence of Saturday & the glory of Resurrection Sunday.
The signs not only change, but a cloth draping the shoulders of the cross goes from red to black to royal purple. And spot-lights illuminate the scene at night.
I pray you too are being intentional to focus on the glorious unfolding of Holy Week.ย Don’t take it for granted! Read the accounts in the gospels. Thank God for His wonderful plan!
Now, as an Easter gift to one of you, this week I’ll be giving away the following to one gal who comments:
~ An NIV thinline compact Bible. No better Easter gift than God’s word!!! It is a great, portable size for your purse or car. (pictured out of the box for you to see the color)
~ Some bags of chocolate-hazelnut & Raspberry white tea (all decaf) for you to enjoy hot or cold while you read your new Bible!
~ A fresh linen candle. Because Jesus’ blood makes us clean!
~ย A dark chocolate-sea salt bar. (Hey….there is sea salt in the Holy Land, right?)
Okay—so leave us a comment letting us know your favorite Easter memory.
Mine is when our kids were small and we made a paper-mache’ “tomb” scene complete with three crosses. They would use an action-figure guy to be Jesus, wrap him in strips of white cloth, place him in the tomb and voila’—-He wasn’t there on Sunday morning….but their Easter baskets were!
What is your favorite Easter memory from adulthood or childhood?
Easter in this part of the world is fully in remembrance of Jesus death and resurrection and what the blood have done for us. my child hood remembrance is how we spent all the easter holidays at convention grounds.
i have precious memories of Easter as a child… we always went to a Good Friday service as a family where we shared in communion. on Easter morning we would “hunt” around the house for our Easter baskets & then went to a Celebration service at our church. i loved the music esp when the choir sang He’s Alive! So moving! (I still get goosebumps when i hear that song!) later in the day we would “hunt” for Easter eggs in our backyard. my mom & dad were very intentional about our family celebrating our Risen Savior! so grateful for my sweet heritage of faith & the price my Lord & Savior paid for me!
I enjoy seeing the live drama of the message of Easter here in Colorado Springs called The Thorn.
Last year right before Easter, I received an email with a recipe for “Easter Story Cookies”. So, I did this with my son, who was 5 years old. We had so much fun and it was so meaningful to me. Each step in the recipe, we read a passage from the Bible of what that step represented. Even though I ‘thought’ I was doing this little recipe for my child, I think I benefited as much or more. This year, I plan on doing the “Resurrection Rolls” that I saw on SheCooks website with my son.
The Easter contada at our church. Every year it’s breathtaking and really brings Easter home to me.
I liked coloring the eggs as much as finding them. I don’t remember how I reasoned that the eggs I colored were the ones the bunny hid. Must not have mattered. I tried to learn how my mom poked pin holes in each end of an egg and blew out the inside to have a hollow egg. I never have mastered that!
My new favorite Easter memory will be this coming Sunday. I was blessed by the opportunity to visit the Holy Land this past summer, so this will be my first Easter after seeing the Empty Tomb. It really was a deeply emotional experience. He is Risen!
I didn’t grow up a Christian, but always enjoyed hunting around our home for the eggs that my mom hid the night before.
As a Christian parent trying to start meaningful traditions of my own, I loved doing the Resurrection Rolls with my girls last year. We’re planning on doing them again tonight. What a great visual of how Jesus was placed in the tomb, and then it was empty! Although I got a few “Why is Jesus a marshmallow mommy?” questions, this year they asked to “do the thing where Jesus goes into the tomb but then when you take it out of the oven He’s risen!” They get it. :)
My favorite Easter memories were receiving our yearly hand made dress from my Grandmother. My sister and I looked forward to that dress all year long, the fancy lace and girly ruffles.
My favorite Easter memory isn’t from just one Easter celebration but from a few. My mom and dad have 4 girls. I am the 3rd of the 4. For many years my mom made our Easter dresses herself, and I can’t think of a year that I wasn’t in love with my Easter outfit. I remember how she would be up late at night and into the wee hours of Easter morning putting the finishing touches on our dresses. When we awakened that beautiful Resurrection Sunday morning, our dresses would be pressed and hanging in our rooms or just outside the door where we could find them. As I reflect on those times, they were more special than gifts under the tree on Christmas morning. This is my favorite Easter memory.
My favorite memory was going to church in my new Easter dress. And then going home to hunt Easter eggs. Then we would color eggs and have a family dinner.
Some of my favorite Easter memories were going to a Great Aunt’s house after church for a family reunion/egg hunt. It was one time during the year that we were able to connect with this side of the family (we lived 1 1/2 hours away).
I really enjoy the Easter church services—especially the musicals that the choir and drama teams would put on, so you could really “get” the story. Sometimes seeing really is believing, and we all need that reminder that “He isn’t here, He’s risen!!”
Happy Resurrection Day Karen~your ministry is such a blessing to me. I look forward to Resurrection Sunday with such joy remembering that we serve a RISEN SAVIOUR. God bless~Lyn
Easter is the time I miss my brother and my Grandmother the most. Though Easter is about Christ’s resurrection and our hope, I still miss them. Some of my favorite memories are of family get togethers, their was always a specialness about them. Recently a friend and I were discussing – is it because Christmas can get caught up with gift giving. Easter stands alone. I love Easter and my family getting together.
My favorite Easter memory was the year we hid way too many eggs in the yard and not all of them were found. They were real eggs so after a week or so they started appearing in the mouth of my 6lb long- haired Chihuahua. She would find them, carry them around and then dig a spot and hide them again. This went on for weeks. I can still see that little dog rounding the corner of the house with a bright blue, green, pink or yellow egg in her tiny mouth, almost covering her face.
She really enjoyed Easter that year too!
My favorite Easter memory is the first Easter after I got saved in 2006. Prior to that, growing up in England, Easter was all about chocolate and the Easter bunny but in 2006, Easter had such a different meaning for me. Jesus’ resurrection was huge; reminding me of what it took for the Lord to save me and the hope that I found in Him after being hopeless as a lost Muslim. I will never forget that first Easter at my first home church where “He is risen” was echoing through the walls.
My favorite Easter memory is when my mom was having one of her episodes and my Aunt who is an Aunt by choice not blood came and rescued my brother and me. We were six and four at the time, mom was off her meds and close to anouther one of her in-patient psychiatric hospital admits. The duplex was a disaster, we had no clean clothes and the only food in the fridge was a jar of pickles. After talking to my mom, my Aunt drove the hundred plus miles to town packed us up and took us all the way back to the ‘farm’.
Just writing this I can feel all the fears of that day creep back into my heart. This Aunt, who was not an aunt, saved the day and gave two small children and one sick mother peace and sweet memories. She pulled together an Easter basket for each of us kids and then with the assistance of her sweet sheppard left ‘bunny’ prints all throughout her kitchen and outside our bedroom doors. If I close my eyes I can still hear my precious baby brotherโs high pitch scream โ โThe Easter Bunny found us, he really found us and he really does exist. โ Even though there were no sermon’s on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I have carried the lesson of that day in my heart for the last thirty-five years.
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my favorite Easter memories from childhood are just glimpes – daffodils in lines running between our house and my grandparents’ house, shiny new shoes, hymns that rang of the resurrection…
My favorite memory was going to church with my grandparents, and getting to wear new dresses. I looked forward to big holidays because that was when I got to go to church. I am so thankful for grandparents who shared Jesus with me, because like Him, they loved me!
My favorite memories are times spent with family – Easter egg hunts, dying eggs, food…..
and my forever family members – Worshipping a Living Lord!