Mike Smith
Artesia Daily Press
msmith@currentargus.com

A member of Faith Baptist Church in Artesia since childhood, Jennifer Walker has seen Easter celebrations at the church grow from small observances into large community gatherings.

“When I was a kid there were like 100 people at our church and now it has grown into a larger community of people. It is a large family now,” said Walker, who for the past five years has been the church’s “kids director,” helping to coordinate children’s activities at the church.

One of the church’s most popular activities is the Easter “Eggstravaganza,” an annual Easter egg hunt. This year’s event, the eighth, was held April 19 at Morris Field on 13th Street and drew an estimated crowd of 2,500 to 3,000, Walker said.

“It’s really cool to see the growth that has happened and come out here and to love an entire community. That wouldn’t have happened when I was a kid,” said Walker, who’s 47. “It’s really awesome to see how God’s worked and grown it and moved it.”

Walker and Faith Baptist kids pastor Andy Singleton said planning for the Easter Eggstravaganza starts a year ahead of time as the church orders 50,000 plastic eggs prefilled with hard candy or toys. That’s a lot of eggs to spread around the Morris Field grounds but organizers say they want to make sure every family that attends gets to take one home.

Faith Baptist Pastor Mike Duff says the church uses the prefilled eggs because hand-filling them would be a daunting task for church members and staff.

“We order them. They are pre done,” Duff said. “We order them in boxes, and they are shipped to us. They are sealed and wrapped. The candy is in them …. it would take forever to do 50,000 eggs.”

Eggstravaganza is a free community event that allows the church to meet community members, Walker said.

“We love Artesia, and we want to be here for everybody. It’s a fun way to get out and get everybody together,” she said.

Singleton said recruiting volunteers to help with all the work behind the scenes is never a problem.

“We have a ton of volunteers from our church sign up and help,” he said on the day of the hunt. “We had people out here yesterday (April 18) morning getting stuff ready for set up. Then this morning at 8 o’clock, we had people out here setting up our fencing and putting out eggs and we actually had two hunts today,” he said.

Singleton said placing the eggs along with ordering hot dogs, hot dog buns, bouncing houses and other infrastructure needed for the event would not be possible without the extra hands from the church.

“We had 25 to 30 people show up from our church this morning and helped put out stuff and we really couldn’t do this event without the help from our church members,” he said.

Artesia resident and Faith Baptist Church member Cibele Howard, a substitute teacher for Artesia Public Schools, enjoyed the nice weather as her daughter Sara played at one of the bouncing houses.

“FBC does this as a way to invite people to come to church. I brought my daughter to have fun outside,” she said.

Mike Smith can be reached at 575-308-8734 or follow on X @mikesmithartesianm.