The Hope of Easter Shines Through : Holiday: Homeless celebrate with dinners, egg hunts at area missions.

The lawn was a square of Astroturf spread out on a hot, asphalt parking lot. The bushes were potted plants. The eggs were plastic.

But for 22-month-old John Mancuso, it might as well have been the White House lawn. The towheaded toddler had that much fun at the Skid Row Easter egg hunt, excitedly prying open the eggs and sending the brightly colored jelly beans inside spilling onto his lap.

John and his mother, Wendy Aldstadt, 22, live in a tent in downtown Los Angeles, not far from the Union Rescue Mission on South Main Street, where homeless people gathered Sunday to celebrate the Easter holiday.

From Skid Row to Beverly Hills, from amusement parks to the Hollywood Bowl, Southern Californians observed Easter with activities ranging from egg hunts to religious services on a sweltering Sunday that saw the mercury climb to 85 degrees at Los Angeles’ Civic Center.

At the Union Rescue Mission, Rhonda Furbish, 3, and her brother, Andrew York, almost 4, quickly filled their paper-flowered Easter baskets with plastic eggs they scooped up from between the potted plants. Then they sat down in the hot sun to wait for a meal of baked ham, green beans, candied yams and fruit pie.

Their mother, Sheila Furbish, sorted through piles of donated shoes looking for the right sizes for herself and the children. Furbish and her youngsters live in a welfare hotel near the mission.

“Homelessness is increasing,” said the Rev. John Samaan, vice president at the mission. The weak economy, he said, accounts for the 18% rise in the number of people the mission is feeding each day.

About 4,000 people were expected for the Easter meal, served at long tables in a parking lot next to the mission.

“We ordered a little over 1,500 pounds of ham,” said Sandy Hill, supervisor of the mission kitchen.

A few blocks away, Kim Divers and her three children, ages 4, 3 and 19 months old, waited in line for their baked chicken meal at the Fred Jordan Mission. Had it not been for the mission, Divers said, her children would not have had Easter baskets.

On weekdays, Charli Spears, owner of Elite Touch, a Sherman Oaks gift basket business, is filling baskets with such delicacies as chocolate truffles and champagne. But Spears and a group of friends spent Sunday serving meals to the 5,000 people expected to show up at the Jordan Mission.

“I used to have (Easter) dinner for people who had no place to go,” Spears said. “But this is better because people who have a home can always find a place to go, and people who don’t can’t.”

In affluent Holmby Hills, radio personality Casey Kasem and his wife, Jean, had an Easter egg hunt for about 250 children bused to the couple’s home from five Los Angeles County missions.

Eggs for the hunt were wooden, and signed by such celebrities as Valerie Harper, Michael Jackson, Earvin (Magic) Johnson and Tony Danza, and politicians Mayor Tom Bradley and former President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy.

At Raging Waters in San Dimas, about 750 youngsters showed up for an egg hunt, the amusement park’s first. It was also the first year the park was open on the holiday, said spokeswoman Liana Miller.

Traditional sunrise services were held at several sites in the Southland, including all five Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and the Hollywood Bowl, where 12,000 attended.

Not everyone, however, was in a charitable mood this Easter, as Eduardo Giron discovered when he arrived Sunday morning to open his Los Angeles store, the Love Bird Pet Shop at 4152 Beverly Blvd. Someone had smashed his display window and stolen almost a dozen Easter bunnies.