Easter in Public School

Our third collection drive for the OKC Rescue Mission was delivered on Monday. We pledged to make 50-60 Easter baskets for the children who call the Mission home. Well, Moore West Tigers delivered BIG time! We collected and assembled over 110 baskets!!! Isn't that incredible!? Our kids really shined this time! So much in fact that we took 60 baskets to the Mission, 66 baskets to our feeder school, Houchin Elementary, for the kindergartens and two boxes of candy, one box of classroom supplies, one box of toys and two bags of stuffed animals to Fairview Elementary, another feeder school, for them to use in their Special Education Easter Egg Hunt and as state testing rewards! How cool! Our collection went so far this time!!!

The plan for the Mission delivery was to deliver the baskets after school and have an Easter party with the children. Things didn't go as planned...They went better!!!

We took almost 40 junior high students, with a handful of parents, one grandma, our head principal and the four of us reading teachers, to the Mission. The kids took charge setting up two tables with the baskets and others passing out Peeps, marshmallow chicks and bunnies, to the kids to tidy them over until the elementary kids arrived back at the Mission from the after school program. Moms with infants and toddlers were anxiously waiting and talking up a storm. They had never seen anything like it! We had our students take a child, or mom if the child was too tiny, up to pick out a special basket. Then our students took the child to a spot in the gym, where we were, to open up the basket. One student told me as her little boy was opening his candy-filled plastic eggs, he stopped to offer her one first. She was surprised since it was for him; not her. That sweet little boy wanted to share when he had every right not to. The Mission kids' excitement over little trinkets, eggs, candy, books and bubbles was humbling. When in my life did I get so distracted that the little things stopped being happiness for me? What a reality check for all of us. After the contains of every basket were discovered, it was time to play! Our kids immediately started making games of basketball, jump rope, bubble blowing, Duck Duck Goose and one male student of mine played dominoes with some of the Mission moms! Ha! They were impressed at his math skills; how quickly he could add the dots on the dominoes. He said that made him feel good because he struggles with math. No one has ever called him a 'math whiz' and those ladies did.

It was an incredible experience; a humbling way to show exactly what Jesus did this week for all of us. I'm thrilled to work in a place where spreading the love of God is allowed because so much of this world needs Jesus.

The Biggest Hearts I Know:

Moore West Tigers and the Reading department