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E.L. churches help students to celebrate holiday away from home

April 24, 2011
	<p>Lansing resident Mia Mayville, 7, carries a lily to the alter Saturday morning at the Peoples Church of East Lansing, 200 W. Grand River Ave. The Peoples Church of East Lansing ordered a large amount of lilies to decorate their place of worship for Easter.</p>

Lansing resident Mia Mayville, 7, carries a lily to the alter Saturday morning at the Peoples Church of East Lansing, 200 W. Grand River Ave. The Peoples Church of East Lansing ordered a large amount of lilies to decorate their place of worship for Easter.

Photo by Matt Hallowell | The State News

Although she doesn’t attend church, Easter still is an important holiday to Lauren Barszewski— it is an opportunity to spend time with family, a rare occurrence for the advertising junior since going to college.

But Sunday, for the first time, Barszewski spent the holiday alone. Instead of going home, Barszewski spent Easter weekend at school, preparing for her upcoming final exams.

“It really is (tough) — I feel like I miss a lot when I’m (at school),” she said. “Right now I have to give up a family event, seeing all my aunts and uncles because I have to study for my finals.”

Because Easter was so late this year, numerous students were faced with the decision of staying to study or returning home to celebrate with family. But several churches in the area were ready for whatever the turn out happened to be.

Colleen Tinsey, operations assistant for St. John’s Catholic Student Center, 327 M.A.C. Ave., said many students expressed interest in attending Mass with their families in East Lansing rather than making the trip home. The church was prepared for “standing room only” crowds, Tinsey said.

Tinsey said starting Friday evening — after the Good Friday Mass, when the alter has to be bare — the church members began decorating the student center with white banners, more than 100 pots of flowers, bark and rocks to resemble a garden.

“Right when you walk in the door you get that springtime smell that we’re not getting outside and then it’s just joyful,” Tinsey said. “(Flowers are) all around the alter, it just adds to the whole joyful experience that Easter is.”

Once the Mass concluded, families dispersed to enjoy their own brunches and dinners and not many linger around the church, Tinsey said.

But that was not the case at University Lutheran Church, 1020 S. Harrison Road. There, many families stay and visit with one another and the church serves breakfast between services, head pastor Frederick Fritz said.

Fritz said University Lutheran also was decorated with floral arrangements as well as bright colors to bring out the joyousness of the holiday. Along with candles lining the back wall of the church, large gold letters reading “alleluia” were hung above the alter, Fritz said.

“(The church is) a riot of color, you really get put in the mood of the holiday — which is joyous,” he said. “It helps in a visual way to go from the starkness of Good Friday to the vibrance of Easter Sunday.”

The Peoples Church of East Lansing, 200 W. Grand River Ave., had a floral arrangement of its own with more than 100 lilies in the front of the church, said Dee Przybylski, a secretary with the church.

“(The service is) very upbeat because Christ has risen,” Przybylski said. “It’s very exciting.”

Human resource and labor relations graduate student Gabriel Davis said this Sunday also was the first Easter he spent away from his family in Connecticut.

Instead, Davis celebrated with the congregation from Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church at the Hill Career Academy, 5815 Wise Road, in Lansing. The service included performances, spiritual dancers and a choir, Davis said, and although he enjoyed it, the service wasn’t the same without his family.

“If I was back home my little sister would be performing in the church service,” he said.

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