Saturday, November 01, 2008
On a missionColonial Presbyterian Church
Church bazaars sell baked goods, holiday gifts and crafts to support outreach at home and abroad.
ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times
Members of Colonial Presbyterian Church's youth group assemble fair trade craft items to be sold at a church bazaar Nov. 8. They are raising money for a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in June.
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Nancy Deyerle and her group raise money for a local food pantry and Hunters for the Hungry. Sandra Caroll's group does the same for a disaster relief program. Barbara Cisco's group is raising money to send a 14-person mission to the Dominican Republic.
Dozens of churches in the Roanoke Valley this month will host their holiday sales, or bazaars, as a tradition where they sell homemade crafts and foods to raise money for various charities. And organizing the one- or two-day events can be a daunting duty for the few who are charged with the planning.
"Yes, that's me. All the headaches are mine," Deyerle said.
Since 2006, the western Roanoke County resident has been the lead organizer of the annual bazaar at Locust Grove United Methodist Church, on 3415 Locust Grove Lane in West Salem. This year's bazaar is Nov. 8.
The event is put on by many volunteers, including people who post the prices on the goods in the bake sale, people who sell the crafts and the person who handles publicity (that's Deyerle).
It also involves a fair amount of food: 100 hot dogs, 100 hot dog buns and a gallon of chili for the chili dogs.
Deyerle doesn't single-handedly organize the sale. Most of the planning happens among a small group of people from the church, and for the day of the event, those people enlist many other members.
A challenge the group faced this year, Deyerle said, is a slowly shrinking attendance at Locust Grove. That has translated to fewer volunteers. Another challenge, she said, has been a drop in financial support, as members of the largely retiree congregation have seen their savings shrink during a weak economy. The bazaar raffle ticket sales are down, she said.
"Where people used to buy $20 worth, they're buying $5," she said. "People are all looking at their retirement plans and are all hoping they can hang on to what they've got. So you have to be realistic about this."
The committee that organizes the bazaar may not get as much money for the charity missions this year, Deyerle said. So, she asked, how are other churches doing it?
Cisco, principal organizer of the bazaar at Colonial Presbyterian Church on 3550 Poplar Drive in Roanoke, might have the answer to that.
Her church has scheduled 19 vendors for its Nov. 8 sale, and it's merely one of several events to raise $14,000 for a 14-person mission trip in June to the Dominican Republic.
The church has held a silent auction, a spaghetti lunch, and plans to sell a cookbook and host a small concert series next year, Cisco said. The 14 people on the mission trip were involved in the planning for the bazaar, as were other members of the church.
They began organizing for this year's bazaar -- their first one -- in June, Cisco said.
That's unusual because many churches take a full year to plan that event. Caroll, the lead organizer of the bazaar at Peters Creek Church of the Brethren, at 533 Cove Road in Roanoke, said she figured that out last year, when the church held its first one since 1982.
The women's fellowship at the church revived the bazaar tradition to raise money for the church's disaster relief program, and for the seniors' soup dinners, among other causes.
It took them 12 months to plan this year's bazaar, which is today.
"When one is over, we start planning for the other," Carroll said. "It just takes that much time to plan it."
