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Church ministers to community with fun, food, fellowship

TIMES photographs by Annette Beard Aleah Munns, 2, picked up colored eggs at the Garfield Easter egg hunt Saturday. Aleah is the daughter of Codey and Katie Munns.
TIMES photographs by Annette Beard Aleah Munns, 2, picked up colored eggs at the Garfield Easter egg hunt Saturday. Aleah is the daughter of Codey and Katie Munns.

GARFIELD -- Despite cold temperatures and chilly winds, children grabbed their Easter baskets and lined up behind the twine barrier preparing to run onto the field and collect as many of the 5,000 plastic colored eggs as they could Saturday. There were a few special eggs containing a ticket entitling the owner to be entered in a drawing for a handmade Easter basket.

Prior to the egg hunt, more than 200 children and their parents filed into the Northeast Benton County Volunteer Fire Department community room in Garfield to register, color an Easter page, get a drink and a cookie, pet the rabbit and chicks and pose for a photograph with the Easter bunny.

For photographs, go to

http://www.1stgarfi…

Click “Gallery”

Click “Easter 2014”

The fields at Hamilton Park in front of the NEBCO community room were divided for children by age group for the second annual Easter egg hunt sponsored by First Baptist Church, Garfield. A MedEvac helicopter landed about 30 minutes prior to the egg hunts and children swarmed the helicopter for tours and a chance to sit inside the copter for their photograph.

Inside the community room, volunteers dressed in signature red T-shirts with "We love our community" printed on the back took registrations, served drinks and desserts, photographed children posing with the Easter bunny and ministered to the people in attendance.

Squeals and giggles punctuated calls of "me, me" along with hands raised from those wanting to volunteer to help Bonkers the Clown indicated the success of the magician's performance.

"We're just trying to love on people," Paul Bryant, pastor of First Baptist Church, Garfield, said. "It's not about church; it's about community."

"It was a lot of work putting it together," Shirley McCann, organizer of the event, said, as she went from table to table asking people how they were doing and whether they needed anything.

Bryant said there were 40 to 50 volunteers working Saturday and many people had worked in the preceding days preparing for the event.

Teresa Vining took photographs of children posing with the Easter bunny. Those photographs are available on the church web site to download.

Community on 04/08/2015