By: Hannah Trice
Twenty-four hundred cupcakes. I honestly didn’t know how it could happen. Just two weeks before I had been told I was getting over mono (no worries, I didn’t bake it into the cupcakes!) , and we were still trying to get all the pass-out sites set in stone. The details were sketchy, at best. But here it was, all coming together.
We started the process at my house, where we were able to bake around twelve batches…not frosted. My mom makes cakes for weddings and birthdays, so she has things like this down to an art. It was fantastic. We then headed to a local church that had so graciously opened up their commercial kitchen to us. We divided up into teams when we arrived. Since we already had hundreds of cupcakes to decorate, we had people frosting, mixing, pouring batter, and watching the cupcakes in the ovens. We even had someone who just washed the dishes. Everyone took on a servant’s heart and we were able to bake even more cupcakes. One of our leaders, a man who has a a passion for the sanctity of life, prayed over the cupcakes and the group. We then brought the cupcakes back to my house to be passed out. My gracious there were sooo many…
The next day, we had people drop off cupcakes that they had made at home. Not only did that bring our cupcake total up, but it also added some more variety to the mix. We were so blessed to have so many willing volunteers.
I want to be clear with you. The point of National Cupcakes for Life day is NOT to see just how many cupcakes you can make. While I was extremely blessed and impressed at what God did with our big numbers, the most important thing is planting a seed in the hearts of those who take the cupcakes…to get them to think about personhood, and the sanctity of life.
The cupcakes were passed out at multiple sites. Our main sites were at a local Christian bookstore and a Fall festival being put on by a school. It was encouraging being at the bookstore, since most of the people were pro-life. Our goal was to get them to actually think about why they were pro-life. Telling someone that they are eating a cupcake to celebrate the birthday of someone who was killed because of abortion can be sobering. That was the general effect. One woman was even moved to tears. You never know what someone has been through. We hopefully touched more people than we’ll ever know.
We had a little more opposition at the festival. Since it was open to the community, the crowd was a little more diverse. One woman wouldn’t take a cupcake, and shook her head saying “wow, that’s heavy”, then moved on with her children. One man said he wouldn’t like a cupcake for life, but he’d “take a cupcake for choice”, if we had any of those. We didn’t engage him, he moved on in peace. Another woman strongly disapproved of our beliefs. It was a little frustrating, but OK. Any response like that assures us that we made someone think.
We were also able to pass out cupcakes at a local Christian school. We passed out to a large group of HS students during their lunch period. We had a lot of positive response, but we also had a little opposition. The Crisis Pregnancy Center where I volunteer helped to support the event, and my director came with us to the school with some information about the center. A lot of students took information on abortion, abstinence, and STDs. One girl complained that the school supported the CPC, but would kick a student out if she were to get pregnant. I had never thought about how getting kicked out of school would be a strong motivation to get an abortion. Obviously something we need to think about. The issue there would be to get them to think about staying abstinent. How do you set a school policy that would encourage girls to keep their children, but not without loosening the rules so that they feel being sexually active is OK? And what about in the case of rape? It caused me to wonder…I’ll be doing some research. My director has all the pics from that event, I’ll try and share some I’m able to get a hold of them.
After we finished passing out at the school, some cupcakes were sent to a nursing home, a daycare, and to an event were international students meet for Christian fellowship. Even if everyone receiving the cupcakes didn’t understand exactly what they were about, I hope they at least remember gave them to them. That’s another goal of Cupcakes for Life…one of the main ones for the Central Arkansas event. We needed to give the pro-life movement a positive face. We love women, we don’t hate them. We care for people in a genuine way. That’s what we really wanted people to know.
The last place to receive cupcakes was my church’s youth choir. The choir is open to anyone who wants to join, 7th-12th grade, not just my church. We have a group of about sixty or more, all different ages. I got up in front of the group and talked to them about the cupcakes, then stood in the back to pass them out. One girl had never heard the word “abortion” before. I hope a door was opened for her to ask her parents more. The most rewarding response was when a girl of about fourteen walked up and shared that she and her sister had been adopted. She knew that she was almost one of those children. That her birthday could have been one of the ones celebrated by the cupcakes. She was a live, and so thankful that we were there.
Big shout out to all the volunteers, and to Ann and Joe Baker, two of the brains behind the idea of Cupcakes for Life. I was privileged to meet them at the CareNet conference, and they an amazing couple. I’ll be sharing more of their projects soon! Thank you all so much for your prayers, encouragement, and support. I really couldn’t do it without your love. I live on love. This is a hard movement, but together we can change the heart of society. We just have to plant the seeds and let Him do the work.
L’chaim,
Hannah T.
For more by Hannah Trice, check out: http://theprolifeendeavorsofme.wordpress.com/
