Kids spring into action during annual Easter egg hunt at Aurora church

Zamuel Mull, 9, of Aurora, looks forward to Easter every year which always includes hunting for eggs.

Zamuel said he had a strategy when his turn came to go and collect some eggs on Saturday morning during the Easter egg hunt at Redeemer Community Church in Aurora.

“My strategy is go to the back. There’s mostly eggs back there,” he said. “No one ever goes there. Mostly people go to the front but no one goes to the back. I’ve done this before and I know how they do it. For me, this is better than Halloween because you get all your candy at once instead of one piece at a time, and you don’t have to walk all over to get it.”

The free event outside the church at 904 N. Edgelawn Drive was open to the entire community and featured more than 4,000 plastic eggs filled with candy and prizes that kids collected in waves based on age.

Jill Poel, staff administrator for Redeemer Community Church, said the annual egg hunt was first held in 2012.

“What we hear is how much people appreciate how friendly it is for all ages, and, of course, people love the scramble,” Poel said. “We do the hunt in three waves. The first wave is youngsters through kindergarten-age, and the second is grades one to five. The third wave is the scramble where all the kids go out again and get all the eggs that are left.”

Poel said nearly two-dozen church volunteers came together to fill eggs, adding various pieces of candy as well as ticket prizes that she said included “about 7% of the eggs having gift cards to restaurants and things like that.”

“Church members donated the candy as well as the prizes,” she said. “We hold this on Saturday just to keep our worship service on Sunday the primary thing. We expect families to do things in the afternoon of Easter, so we like to have this the day before.”

People filled the sanctuary at the church before the start of the hunt.

“I feel like the crowd is really good today. It’s a little bit chilly but we have a great turnout,” Matt Mull, one of the pastors of the church, said. “I feel like this gets the community going. It’s always an exciting thing and when Easter is a little bit later it seems like there are so many competing things so it’s really exciting to see so many people come out for this.”

Parents with children anxiously awaited the start of the egg hunt Saturday including Eranique Thomas of Aurora who came with her son August, 3.

“This is my son’s second time doing this – he had an Easter egg hunt in school yesterday,” Thomas said Saturday. “He knows what’s going on. He definitely wants candy.”

Nicole Theobald of Aurora said she brought her daughter Sophia, 3, to the event before and that her daughter had participated in another egg hunt “about a week ago.”

“It is a lot of fun for her to see the other kids doing it and interact with them,” she said. “This is something she’s been looking forward to. We’ve been building up to it and reading lots of Easter stories.”

David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.