Sharing Christ’s Love through Candy and Relationships

The Easter basket give-away a month ago was a wonderful gift to so many kids. Seventy-eight Easter baskets were given away, which is almost thirty more than last year. A big thank you to everyone who made it happen!

Chelsea Pajardo at Belair-Edison Elementary School and Michelle Chase, a leader of Love Baltimore (previously Apostles in the City), connected Resurrection with families to give Easter baskets to. 

Michelle and Chelsea have rich relationships with many families in Belair-Edison and they created a list of families who Michelle called ahead of time. Michelle says, “Since the Easter baskets are not given out by the school it’s a great opportunity to explicitly share Christ’s love in the Easter story.”

The Easter basket give-away is organized by Faithworks, which connects people at Resurrection with opportunities to develop relationships and serve others, especially in Baltimore city.  The students at Resurrection partnered with Faithworks to pack the Easter baskets.

Easter Baskets made with love

Anna Burden, the student ministry associate, says the bags were filled with stuffed animals, a book about the biblical Easter story, a gift card for a family Easter meal, and LOTS of candy. “Our hope is that they bring joy.” Anna added with a laugh, “the bags also have toothbrushes and toothpaste to go along with all of that candy.”

Anna said the Easter basket give-away was a gift to the students too: “We have our students pray over our baskets before we send them out which I think is pretty special and definitely takes students outside of their comfort zones.”

Jill Griffin, the lay-leader of FaithWorks and point-person for the Easter Basket give-away, said, “The really big change this year was that we had Resurrection families personally deliver Easter baskets to families in Belair-Edison.”

Previously, many of the collections at Resurrection were donated to different nonprofits, some of them connected to Resurrection and some not. “In the Fall of 2019, the Faithworks team started rethinking whether we were being strategic, or as strategic as we could be. Maybe we could not just give stuff but work toward more systemic changes by building relationships,” Jill explained.

“Honestly, it was God bringing a lot of pieces together for us and someone at the Faithworks meeting said ‘what if we started partnering more intentionally with the families in Belair-Edison in order to develop relationships?’” Now the Easter baskets, Thanksgiving baskets, Christmas gifts, the coat collection, and back to school supplies go to these families in Belair-Edison, Baltimore.

Jill described the joy of dropping off the baskets with her family, “And it was so fun… the kids would be so cute. We knew some of the them through dropping off over the Summer. You could hear them through the doors or they had their faces pressed up to the windows, yelling ‘They’re here! They’re here!’”

“I think the biggest thing is for them to know that God loves them and that there are people out there who love them  and care about them. That’s huge.” Jill estimates over fifty of the families who received the Easter baskets have no known relationship to God or church.

Anna Burden said “We want to let people know that we think about them during these big seasons and are consistently thinking about and praying for them.”

“Easter is probably the biggest celebration of the church year and we want them to know that our celebration is not limited to our immediate church. We want them to feel remembered and to join in on the celebration.”

Upcoming ways to serve with Resurrection:

• May 22: Sign-Up to distribute food to families in Belair-Edison, Baltimore.
• May 22: Help serve lunch to those experiencing homelessness, poverty, or addiction at Helping Up Mission.
• May 22: Help harvest food for those experiencing hunger by volunteering at First Fruits Farm with Anna Burden and the ResStudents. All are welcome to join.

Sign-Up for these opportunities here!