Wind Chill = 9; Snow = 1/2 to 1 inch; Egg Drop? AMAZING

YO YO YO Element Church! Amazing what went down today. Absolutely amazing! That's Curtis (youth pastor) hangin' out of the chopper droppin' eggs. HOW COOL IS THAT? No one else but God deserves credit for what was pulled off this morning at Miller Field. Absolutely amazed. Here is what went down today. I need to be careful or I'll type WAY too long.

6 AM got up and went right to the window. Much to my chagrin, there was a coating of snow on the ground, weather channel said 22 degrees with a wind chill of 9. I filled my coffee cup and headed down to the office to make some final preparations for today. (I fully expected to cancel the event at this time)

7 AM picked up Adam and drove trailer over to the field. It was VERY cold and everything was covered in snow. Within minutes volunteers were showing up. I looked at Adam and said "I don't think we can do this." Adam said "Bro, we've got to do it!" The volunteers said "What can we do to pull this off?" ...I paused and said "Shovels...LOTS AND LOTS OF SHOVELS". People made phones calls for shovels, others went home for shovels. Our thoughts were on shovels. The Sun wasn't even up at this point. I'm thinking "Will anyone show up?" HA, wow. What small thinking I have sometimes.

Our volunteers absolutely ROCKED IT OUT today. AMAZING! Seriously they did an unbelievable job pulling this off. We had 20 people shoveling a stinking football field. We shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. People received their assignments for game areas, cleared it with a shovel and set up their games. At 9 o'clock a line started forming. Gates didn't open until 9:45 AM.

The Sun was up, wind was down and it turned into a BEAUTIFUL day. By the time we dropped the eggs it was sunny and in the 40's. The line of people waiting to get in seemed to go on forever. Folks, over 2000 people came to the egg drop today. 1000 kids received a ticket and we know that many families bypassed the tickets and just came in. There may have been 3000 there. IT WAS PACKED!

The helicopter came roaring in and did an amazing job hovering and dropping the eggs. They flew over several times and the crowd screamed and yelled. So cool! The amount of people was overwhelming. We weren't prepared for that many. I'm so glad we ordered the extra 10,000 eggs to make it 25,000 total. After we cleared the field of snow we covered it with about 10,000 eggs.

After the chopper dropped the eggs the kids were chompin' at the bit to hit that field. When we did the countdown it was CHAOS! 1000 kids going nuts over Easter eggs. Some kids got WAAY to much while others who weren't as aggressive were short changed.

We gave away 4 Easter baskets, tons of candy, a video ipod, and a Nintendo Wii with a video chair. While we were standing there the YMCA director said "I'll throw in two 6 month memberships to give away." HA, that was crazy.

We're already talking about changes to make. No event is perfect by any means. There are MANY things we can do better. Now that we've done it once, we kinda know what to expect. We seriously may need 50,000 eggs next year. LOTS of people asked if we were doing this again. LOTS of people were VERY interested in Element Church. Our goal was not to get people to church, it was simply to serve the city and say "This is for YOU!" If no one comes to church because of it we'll STILL do it again next year, BIGGER AND BETTER!

If you were a volunteer today and have any suggestions for us as far as logistics, traffic flow, personnel, please email me and let me know. We need to start compiling a list of how to improve the event. I think the advertising worked. LOL

Two weeks ago we started planning this thing. TWO WEEKS! In two weeks God pulled a LOT together. WOW! I think for two weeks of planning it went pretty well. I felt bad for the pre-school area. They were overflowing. Also, I apologize for any families who were jipped on candy and eggs. I trust that the majority of the people had a GREAT experience today. In any event this big there are bound to be people who don't get a good experience. Our goal next year will be to make it smoother, more enjoyable and more successful.

If adding our third service tomorrow goes this well, I'll be a happy man. I was more nervous for this event today than any other event I've done EVER in church. I did not feel ready yesterday. Element E:Team, you guys ROCK! Thank you to all who helped out. Watch tonight on the 10 o'clock news for a report on the day. They were out there and interviewed me following the event.

Told ya I'd type too long. Praise the Lord for safety, good weather, amazing people and out of this world volunteers. We'll post pictures and video tomorrow! Adam is working on a vid for church in the morning.

Following Christ,

Jeff