Family Easter Celebration at Mableton First Baptist

Our team of workers arrive at the church at 11am. The nice room setup has been accomplished in the past few days. We had moved the celebration to the Palm Sunday weekend this year because of a Mableton event planned at the square just up the street for Easter weekend.

The workers gather for overall instructions from Becky before the arrival of our guests.

Amber and Rico Stiefel take charge of the abundant prize table. They will be joined by youth helpers later.

Norma and family with Lionel and Abril arrive and are escorted to a table by Brenda Nave.

As families arrive they are encouraged to participate in the games along the south wall. Gail Wade directs the egg memory game.

Tony Mode and Johnny Huffman direct the cup stack race.

Melissa Little and Barbara Floyd direct the egg discovery game.

Ricky Ridgway and Billy Ridgway direct the egg-gathering race. More families are joining the games.

Brenda Speight and Wanda Willey direct the Bingo game and have gathered three generations here.

A large group has now gathered for the game row and good fellowship was in evidence.

Three of our Awana students plus Cheryl Anthony and her great niece in the cup stack race.

Now everyone is encouraging the youngest member in the race. Cheryl Anthony does the game tour with her great niece.

Betsy Weaver enjoys touring the games with her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters.

Everyone seemed to enjoy this game time between 11 and 12 o'clock. This family group enjoyed the cup stack race.

Bob Wade shares a calm egg discovery game.

At about noon, Becky called everyone to their tables and began to send three tables at a time to the food line for pizza and nice accessories.

Betsy Weaver, Barbara Floyd, and Melissa Little serve pizza and other items in the food line.

There was plenty of food and the crowd settled down happily for lunch.

After lunch Elaine Ridgway did a chalk drawing of the Crucifixion of Jesus. She has done such drawings for years as an effective way to tell the Gospel story.

With her drawing, Elaine tells the story of Christ's sacrificial death to provide forgiveness for our sins and our salvation.

Elaine moved to a second chalk drawing representing the resurrection of Jesus.

With both the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus in view, Elaine expanded upon the plan of salvation by repenting of our sins and asking Jesus into our hearts for forgiveness.

After Elaine's time of sharing the Gospel, the games and celebration continued. We moved to the time of spinning the "Wheel of EGGcellence" for a selection of eggs to present in exchange for items from the abundant table of prizes.

After spinning the wheel, it was still sometimes tough to pick from the abundance of prizes available!