April 1, 2008

Willow Glen children on the hunt

Looking for goodies and chocolates

By Carol Rosen
Editor

Ten-month-old Angela Velasquez needs a little help getting her eggs into her Easter basket. Angela lives in the Rose Garden area.

It took a long time for volunteers from Willow Glen Baptist Church to buy toys and candy and fill about 5,000 colorful plastic Easter eggs but only 30 minutes to spread them out at Bramhall Park on Saturday, March 22. It took less than 15 minutes for them all to disappear.

The church held one of 25 hunts in the South Bay from Campbell to Redwood City and from Sunnyvale to a number in San Jose. Sponsored by Beautiful Day and local churches, Willow Glen Baptist offered the children a number of golden tickets for special prizes. The tickets were found inside the colorful plastic eggs that also contained candy and small toys.

Before the hunt started, at least 250 smiling and excited children in colorful spring clothes stood waiting, most fairly patiently considering they knew what was coming, behind yellow tape waiting for their age groups to be called. First out were the very young—age 2 and under—who had parental help with some that didn’t appear to know what was going on.

“It’s so much fun to watch the little ones,” said one parent. . It’s obvious in most cases it’s their first hunt and often they’re not even sure what to do.”

The younger kids, those aged 2 and under, got to spend a little longer on the field than the older kids. The older ones have been likened to locusts, cleaning the field in a very short time.

Ethan Annella, a 5-year-old from Willow Glen, looks at the camera before picking up the egg near his feet at the Willow Glen Baptist Church Easter egg hunt. Ethan is a student at Blackford Elementary. Right: four-year-old Sierra, who attends Willow Glen Baptist Church finished hunting eggs and began playing with her cousin. Sierra attends Carden Day School in San Jose.

This is the second year that Willow Glen Baptist has held the egg hunt. Church volunteer Brian Schaffer took it on his shoulders to organize and set up the hunt. “We started laying everything out at about 1 p.m. [for the 1:30 start]. We didn’t want to put the chocolate out too early because it would melt in the sun,” Schaffer said.

“It took us 30 minutes to set it up and about 5 minutes to clean up,” he said laughing. “It’s been a mutual effort, several hours to stuff the eggs at home and at church, but we’ve all had a fun time.”

He had help from about 25 to 30 church members who all wore matching red T-shirts with Willow Glen Baptist Church on them. Several volunteers noted that the number of children increased this year, but that possibly was due to the beautiful weather.

Beautiful Day is a national network of churches working in collaboration with businesses, organizations, schools, media, entertainment, government, and health care to unleash compassion into the local community in a creative and innovative way.

It started as an idea to answer a very specific question that is “if our church burnt to the ground would the community care?” Convinced the answer was “no,” the group decided in 2004 to build a creative approach to reaching the community. There were a few blood drives and meals handed out to families in need and the vision began to unfold. The group then decided to include other churches, local businesses and groups that can help in order to work together to impact a whole community.