Easter: We Have a Problem

Holy Week has, in the last few years, replaced Christmas as my favourite part of the church calendar. This year, however, I'm fretting. Allow me to chronicle my Holy Week experience from the very beginning...

At our leadership retreat in November last year, we decided that every school holiday, we were going to try and plan some activity for the kids centering around the themes of love God, love others. So for Easter this year, since it's right around school holiday for term 1, I thought we'd get the kids to put together food hampers on Palm Sunday and take them to visit the folks in hospice on Easter Sunday.

After weeks of calling around to various places, I was told there isn't actually a hospice on the peninsula. The closest one would be about 20 minutes away in Central Auckland. And since hospices are kind of zoned into districts, because we're in West Auckland, the folks in Central Auckland kept re-directing me to the West Auckland folks, who in turn, told me they only have a site office and don't actually house patients.

Right around then, the folks from St Paul's, the Anglican Church that we rent the building from, contacted Chad to ask if we would be interested in doing something together over Holy Week. Part of it involved me taking fliers to the SUPAkidz (the Bible club we do at Matipo Primary) kids, so Chad forwarded the email to me. St Paul's has a ministry called the Selwyn Group that visits with some of the elderly and shut-ins on the Peninsula. So here I was thinking, problem solved! Now all we have to do is to get the kids to make some kind of craft to take to them, which would have been feasible since up till 2 weeks ago, we were averaging about 8 kids each week.

Jonny, who has been my key resource/idea person suggested that we could do harekeke weaving (Maori flax-weaving) with the kids on Palm Sunday, so here I go again, calling around to different places trying to find someone who could do that with the kids. It wasn't until last weekend when I was at a Scripture Union children's ministry conference that I discovered that Nina, who does SUPAkidz with Steve and I, was able to do it before she had her significant memory-loss. So again, here I was thinking, problem solved!

Then last Sunday came along. Our average of 8 kids grew to 13. I panicked slightly, and ended up sending an e-mail to our contact with St Paul's to let them know that we had a slightly bigger group. They suggested that the since their Selwyn group was kinda small and we don't want 13 kids packed into one house, that we divided up the kids into 3 different groups to do things. I wrote back and said, great idea, we'll find enough adults to come along so that we can split the kids up.

This week, PJ told me excitedly that she knew of a few more families that were thinking of coming to visit this weekend. So I thought, great, we'll make sure we have enough flax for 20, assuming that the 13 who were here the week before would still show up.

We didn't get 8.
Or 13.
Or 20.

We got flippin' 28 kids.

I wish I could have taken a picture of the maxed-out sanctuary today. Or the look on Uncle BK's face when he walked in, shocked, then not sure where he was going to find a seat. Or when Jonny walked in today (late, as usual), found a seat, turned back to me and mouthed, where did all these people come from???


By some miracle, we ended up with enough flax for everyone, managed to keep kids relatively controlled today, and hopefully everyone went home feeling like they learnt something about Palm Sunday. Who knows. I hope they at least found something that would be enough reason to come back next week (besides their parents dragging them here, of course).

Except now I have a problem. I have one week to figure out what we're doing for Easter. The Easter Egg Hunt will still be on, but I'll probably need to go to a wholesaler for candy. It really is a great problem to be having (I'll admit that I left church tonight with a stupid smile on my face), but it still is a problem. I'm only hoping I don't do my head in trying to get Holy Week sorted that I completely miss the point of it in the first place.

But for now, it's time for bed. There's lots of work to be done, but I have a feeling if I stay up any longer, I'm going to end up doing myself in analysing every part of the WCF story, trying to figure out what it is that's drawing the crowds in.

Because at the end of the day, I know it only happened because there's a Sovereign One at work.

Easter: We have a problem.

Those of you who pray, we'd really appreciate you thinking of us this week.