Easter Recap

• We had a great Easter. The time spent with our church friends and family and the time spent with our immediate family made for a great day.
• Some technical problems with sound and video and the slow gathering of the crowd (at 10:00 I was wondering if anyone was coming) caused early concerns about what God was doing (not that I'm blaming everything on Him but I was hoping for some help). But He came through as He always has and we had the largest gathering of the year and a great service together.
• I love visitors and we had many. I am thankful for all of our people who volunteer in our ministries and make our visitors feel welcomed. We did no advertising for this Easter so all of our visitors came through the invitation of our people. Thank you for inviting your friends and keep up the good work.
• We had a great offering which is unusual on Easter. Usually its the biggest crowd and the smallest offering but this year was different. Thank you for your generosity. We have one more week to give toward our Criminal Minds campaign. I will share those results later.
• The band did a great job and Rayanne sang a song about the cross and knocked a homerun.
• We probably gave out the most unusual Easter gift any Church has ever given - elephants. Everyone got an elephant for Easter. I never believed in the Easter bunny so I'm campaigning for the Easter Elephant. It was a promotion for our next series beginning this Sunday called "The Elephant in the Room." It is going to be about some painfully obvious flaws that people see in the church and in Christians but most churches never talk about them or are in denial of them or simply don't care about them. We handed out the elephants and never said a word about them until the service was over. Even the people who were handing them out didn't know why we were giving elephants to everyone. It is going to be a great series to invite those who are skeptical about Christianity or have been turned off by church or by a Christian they know.
• Grilled out for the first time this year and it was awesome. Jenny and Brian also joined us for lunch.
• We have a great new series in the Children's Ministry also starting on Sunday. It's going to be awesome.
• All of our babies have been born now. We had 4 couples expecting babies (3 of them were first time pregnancies). The first came in Nov. and the last one delivered on Easter Sunday morning. Congratulations to Al and Mary Interiano for their Easter baby.
  
• My sister is coming home from the Ukraine this week for a couple of months to attend their son, Nathanael' graduation from college. It will be great to see her and David.
• It snowed yesterday.
  
• There is much more to share but it will have to come later.