April 2003

Carmalita and Sundiata Sims had just moved back to Ohio with their family where Carmalita reconnected with her life-long friend Stephanie. What the Sims didn't know was that Stephanie was about to introduce them to something that would impact their lives, and it came in the form of a video and a dozen colored plastic eggs.

"Who is this Miss Patty Cake?" was all Carmalita had to say when she visited Stephanie's house. All of the children were sitting around watching her video. "They got on their knees and starting singing 'Jesus says yes, Jesus says yes,'" Carmalita recalls, "and there was my little three-year-old Suniece sitting there as if she was praying the words."

They were watching "Miss Patty Cake's™ Eggstravaganza." Miss Patty Cake, played by Jean Thomason, is the main character of a series of Christian videos for preschoolers. Throughout the 30-minute presentation, Miss Patty Cake and the children learn Bible lessons, sing praise songs, and talk to other characters like General Tick Tock, a grandfather clock, and Amazing Grace, a Bible.

In this video, Miss Patty Cake tells the story of Easter using FamilyLife's best-selling resource, Resurrection Eggs®. The product includes a dozen plastic eggs, each with an object that symbolizes part of the Easter story, from the Passover to Judas's betrayal to Christ's death and resurrection.

Stephanie had just purchased "Miss Patty Cake's Eggstravaganza" and was using the Resurrection Eggs herself to tell the story to her own four children along with Carmalita's three. "Every time we went over there, Suniece wanted to hear the Resurrection Eggs story," Carmalita says.

The Sims even bought a Miss Patty Cake video of their own to watch. They played it in the morning before they went to school and at night before they went to bed. "It was like clock-work. We just pushed in the video while we were getting ready for the day," explains Carmalita. "My three kids would sit in front of the TV with their heads cocked back—mesmerized!" Even Sundiata fell in love with the Miss Patty Cake videos and found himself singing along with the children.

Almost a month later, Carmalita was in a horrible automobile accident. In an instant, her son was killed, and little Suniece was rushed to a hospital, where she lay in a coma. "I was in the room watching her lay there," Carmalita recalls, "and I remembered seeing her sitting on the floor in Stephanie's house singing along with the video."

That very day, Stephanie met Sundiata and Carmalita at the hospital, and with her she brought "Miss Patty Cake's Eggstravaganza" and the Resurrection Eggs. "When Stephanie brought those things, I was thinking, 'If it helps, okay,'" Carmalita says.

They played the video and told the story of the resurrection every day. Eventually, they moved Suniece to a rehab hospital. At the end of a week Suniece started talking, and the first thing she asked for was Miss Patty Cake.

"I was amazed at the impact that this story had on her," says Carmalita. "She had only been watching it for about a month [before the wreck], and out of everything, that was the first thing she asked for. I didn't know that it meant that much to her."

Suniece is home now, and the Sims family has jumped back into the routine of everyday life, including watching Miss Patty Cake every morning and every night. But Suniece hasn't forgotten the love she felt during the tragedy, and Carmalita and Sundiata haven't forgotten the lessons they learned. "This whole thing has changed my perspective on how to relate to children because I see how important it is," says Carmalita.

Sundiata and Carmalita now tell everyone about "Miss Patty Cake's Eggstravaganza" and the Resurrection Eggs. "I just hate it that there are so many people that obviously don't know who Miss Patty Cake is," says Carmalita, "because there is so much that we can glean from how she deals with these kids."

With Easter approaching, colored eggs are everywhere, and Suniece is happy to explain the Easter story to others. "Now when she sees different colored eggs she relates them back to Stephanie telling her the story and what's was in the different eggs," says Carmalita. "She's always trying to tell somebody the Resurrection Eggs story as best she can."

But do Carmalita's two children really understand the resurrection? Absolutely. "Suniece was drawing me a cross the other day," says Carmalita, "And she said, 'Did you know that Jesus died on the cross?' And then my five-year-old said, 'But He's not there anymore.'"