a few thousand eggs

This story begins with about 3,000 colorful, plastic eggs scattered around the University of Michigan campus. In Young Life College, we want to invite busy, stressed out students into fun experiences that allow them to feel like kids again. What better way to do this than inviting the whole campus to join us for our second annual YLC Easter Egg Hunt? Inside these colorful eggs were candy and an invitation to join us for a raffle on Friday at 6pm. We scattered eggs in random places around campus, praying students would find them, enjoy the candy, and decide to spend their Friday evening with us (we also prayed people would pick them up so we wouldn’t get in trouble for littering 3,000 eggs all over campus).

This event felt like we were swinging hard. We put time, prayer, and resources into this in a way that felt different than our intimate dinners and hangouts we’ve hosted throughout the winter semester. We had a classroom booked that felt too big for the scale we’ve previously operated in, so thirty minutes before the event began, we started praying for students to come and the club talk we were about to share.

As soon as we started praying, a student named Eric walked in carrying a huge handful of raffle tickets from eggs he already collected. It was one of the quickest answered prayers I’ve experienced. We told him the event would start soon, and he could hang out there with us. We continued praying.

So many students were filing in early that we decided to stop praying and start talking to them. When the event began, 145 NEW STUDENTS filled the room that now felt too small. It was a bold answered prayer that could have only come from God. We sent the students out to hunt for more eggs, had a raffle with big prizes generously donated to us, and one of our leaders got to stand up and tell them about a personal relationship with Jesus. Oh, and our friend Eric won one of the prizes!

For me personally, I wanted to come on Young Life Staff at the University of Michigan to build relationships with students who are opposed to Jesus. When I was sitting in that room and chatting with these new students, I felt a sense of gratitude that this was exactly what I moved to Michigan to do. He answered this prayer over the course of three years in ways I could have never anticipated, and blessed me in ways I didn’t know I needed.
 

— Abby Fuller, University of Michigan Young Life College Leader