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Shuttle service is available throughout the sale grounds. Visit the What's When and Where page for a map and list of items available in each building.
Feeding the Multitude is located in the Cottonwood Court. Come and enjoy this German Buffet full of food and fellowship which features verenika, ham gravy, sausage, bohne beroggi, borscht, cherry and pluma moos, pies, bread and butter, relishes and bottled water, tea or coffee. The buffet is served Friday night starting at 4pm and opens again on Saturday at 10:30am
Don't forget Breakfast Saturday morning from 6:30am to 10am which is also served in the Cottonwood Court.
This building is strategically located to benefit sale attendees -- a good stopping point on the way to the auctions or to Cottonwood Court. The building has a lot to offer. Going to the Feeding the Multitude? Stop and pick up a snack for while you're wait in line, such as a dozen New Year's cookies or freshly baked cookies. Need a pit stop on your way to one of the auctions? Come enjoy a plate full of verenika and sausage, pie or ice cream for desert.
One of the best parts of baking cookies is being able to eat one fresh from the oven. At the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale, everyone has the opportunity to delight in freshly baked cookies without all the work.
Stop by the Domestic Arts Building and delight your senses with the smell of freshly baked cookies, prepared Friday and Saturday. Come and purchase one or a dozen Whoopie Pies, Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter, Snickerdoodles or Molasses cookies.
Cookies are also available for purchase in the Meadowlark Building.
Booth features sport team caps, brand name caps, insignia caps, company caps, and more for purchase.
If you or your company have caps to donate to the booth (seeking small quantity donations), please contact Richard K. Schroeder, booth organizer, at 620-543-2229 (home) or 620-694-9224 (cell).
What originally began as a way of entertaining people standing in line for food at the sale about twelve years ago, has now become one more way of creatively raising money for Mennonite Central Committee.
Janet Moyer Regier and Kathleen Neff, Newton, and another friend, Grace Adam of Nebraska, offer their works of art-beautifully decorated eggs. And sale guests eagerly watch them demonstrate the painstaking art of decorating psanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs). Naturally some can't go home without making a purchase or two.
The eggs are hand decorated with an ancient wax-resist process using a brass funnel tool, bees' wax, and dyes. Ideally the process starts with a farm fresh egg-its contents to be blown out when the decorating is complete.
The women also invite persons with a working knowledge of psanky to assist them at the booth and possibly donate eggs they have decorated. To volunteer contact Regier at 316-283-6672, or Neff at 316-284-2001.
The Meadowlark Building is home of the Quilt and Surplus Auctions, and the Friday night music program at 7:30pm
The Olde Iron Junktion is located outside the main entrance to the Meadowlark Building. It includes antique items such as tools to tractor seats, from kid toys to wagon wheels.
There are several food booths to choose from in the Meadowlark Building including hamburgers, pork tenders, New Year's Cookies, freshly baked cookies, home-made ice cream, pie, and Russian pancakes.
Penny Power raises money for MCC projects of peace, relief and development around the world.
Spare change can lead to global change. Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches have adopted Penny Power as a great intergenerational activity, collecting coins year-round. Coins and larger donations are collected and taken to annual MCC Relief Sales. At the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale, come to the Meadowlark building and watch the change being counted.
In 2007, Penny Power raised $612,551 U.S. Thank you! MCC's goal in 2008 was $650,000. Last year, the Kansas Sale raised $22,877.77.
More information at www.pennypower.org.
Don't leave without a friendly reminder of all the fun your family had at the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale. Available for purchase in the Meadowlark Building are sale caps, shirts and yardsticks.
The Sunflower North Building is home to the General Auction and the Mennonite Central Committee Booth. Stop by and visit with the staff from MCC and learn about their latest projects.
The food booth in the Sunflower North offers hamburgers, nachos, bohne beroggi, ice cream, New Year's cookies, and pie by the slice.
Starting at 11am on Saturday, Chicken BBQ meals are sold in the Sunflower South Building. Meals are served until 1 or 1:30pm or until food runs out. A meal includes 1/4 chicken, baked beans, choice of cole slaw or applesauce, dinner roll. Pie is available for an additional cost.
Stop and buy your spring plants at the sale. Plants, plants and more plants are available for purchase in the Sunflower South Building. A wide variety of house plants, bedding plants, perennials, grasses, bulbs, roots, shrubs and trees are sold in flats and singles.
The Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale Kid's Activity Center is located in the newly remodeled Pride of Kansas Building. It includes a children's auction, carnival games, barrel rides, and a moon walk and 9-hole mini golf sponsored by MAX. Plus, children are invited to assemble a MCC school kit.
Also, don't forget about the BIG slide located near Cottonwood Court on Cottonwood Ave. Kids can slide while a parent maintains the families spot in line for the Feeding of the Multitude.
Kids bring your parents or grandparents and all your friends and come assemble a school kit.
MCC provides basic school supplies to refugee and displaced children in places such as Bosnia, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Liberia, Nicaragua, North Korea, Serbia and Ukraine each year. Kits are also supplied to poorly-funded schools in Canada and the United States. According to MCC, over 90,000 kits were distributed in 2004. In 2005, school kits also went to the Gulf states hard hit by the hurricane.
Kids are invited to come and assemble a school kit in the Pride of Kansas Building. For a donation of $5, children are invited to pick out a drawstring bag and fill it with 4 notebooks, 4 unsharpened #2 pencils, 1 flexible ruler, 12 colored pencils in a box, and 1 large eraser. The donation covers the cost of the school supplies and drawstring bag. Children participating will receive a balloon and stickers.
Things are really "blowing up" in the Pride of Kansas Building this year. MAX is inviting all children and youth to enjoy a selection of inflatable items. From the Moon Walk to a Bungee Pull - this is one place where you're allowed to bounce off the walls.
Or if you're interested in more "grounded" fun, children of all ages (5 to 105) are invited to the Mennonite Central Committee 9-hole mini-golf. Come learn about MCC projects all disguised as a mini-golf course-a great activity for families and youth groups.
"Community is an integral part of MAX* and every year we look at ways to become more involved with the people we are able to serve," said Denise Dietz, MAX representative. "We also look at ways to give back to the community in some way, shape or form. We knew the Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale was a wonderful cause but we also realized that it was a great opportunity to interact and give back." All earnings from the inflatables and the mini-golf will go back to support MCC.
*MAX serves the Anabaptist community with a Mutual Aid Ministries program and Property and Casualty Insurance services. Visit www.maxwholeness.com for more information or an agent near you.
"Men were meant for singing! This concert embodies the feelings of gratitude, the joy of unity, the thrill of harmony, the passion for service."
So stated the program notes on the program for the first Kansas Mennonite Men's Chorus (KMMC) concert in Hillsboro the spring of 1969.
It had the been the dream of early innovators--the late Vernon Wiebe of Hillsboro and the late David Suderman of North Newton--to assemble a group of 500 men singing together as part of Kansas Mennonite Relief Sale activities. The offering taken would benefit Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).
While the number of singers that first year, at 140, fell far short of the goal of 500, the response to the concert was positive and chorus membership the next year tallied 495. Audience interest also spiked, with 2500 hearing the concert at Century II concert hall. (Another 1000 were turned away for lack of space.) The dream of Wiebe and Suderman was coming to pass.
Although momentum faltered in 1972 with no concerts that year, the following year 568 men came to sing together in Hutchinson's Convention Hall. At present chorus membership hovers around 300.
There has been a succession of capable directors leading in area and mass rehearsals beginning approximately two months before the spring concerts. The first director was Suderman, then Paul Wolgumuth, Jonah Baltzer, and now Ron Garber. There is a steering committee and contact men to keep singers (who pay for expenses themselves) coming back, as well as recruiting new ones.
The music used presents a pleasing variety. Some is classical and is quite challenging to the singers themselves. There are also arrangements of old hymns, spirituals, and pieces with a more modern sound. Special enjoyment came with the chorus's rendition of "Dry Bones"-this included sound effects. Much of KMMC's repertoire also consists of music composed or arranged by directors and by J. Harold Moyer of the music committee. There are also beautiful old German hymn arrangements by the late Herbert C. Richert as well as arrangements by chorus members themselves.
Director Ron Garber views the KMMC as "a choral ensemble that (has) a message--a message of hope and optimism meant for a world wrapped in turmoil and skepticism, a message encapsulated in our motto, 'we sing that others may live.'"
Since the year 2000 the chorus has not only sung its message at Kansas MCC Sale time and in surrounding states, but also has brought their songs to Europe, Canada and California. Plans call for an East Coast tour this summer. Before the chorus traveled, their well-received recordings had also traveled the world. Proceeds from these also benefit MCC. (At present total donations by KMMC to worldwide relief have passed the one-half million mark.)
While many who participate are gifted singers, there are also those who consider their musical abilities to be quite ordinary. Talented instrumentalists also join the group for various numbers.
While most KMMC members are Mennonite, the invitation is open to any man who shows "commitment to Jesus Christ, the Christian Gospel, and the desire to help provide monetary support to the needy of the world," according to Director Garber.
Now put them all together--bringing an attitude of commitment--in an atmosphere of holy discipline, with a dash of humor added. And what is the result? Larry Hatteburg of KAKE-TV in Wichita says it this way:
"It is singing from the heart, from the soul, and it reaches deep into the crevasses of the mind. It's as if a warm blanket is placed around my shoulders. It is probably the blanket of God's love." (Reprinted from the 25th anniversary history book, We sing That Others May Live, by Carol Duerksen)
This year's KMMC spring concerts are set for Sunday, April 19, 7pm at Bethany College, Presser Hall, Lindsborg, and Sunday, April 26, 7pm at Bethel College, Memorial Hall, Newton.
Join the fun and help those in need: Walk, Jog, or Run for all ages and abilities!
This year's 5K fun is an out and back course on a paved path at Rice Park in Hutchinson, Saturday, April 18, beginning at 8 am. Last year's run had 214 entrants and raised over $17,000 for MCC.
Two options for participation are again available: option one is to solicit your own sponsor donations (we challenge you to "go the extra mile"); option two is to pay the traditional entry fee.
A pre-registration form is here and included in the sale guidebook. If postmarked before April 1, the fee is $15 and includes a run T-shirt. Late registration is $20 and can be done at the Meadowlark Building (quilt building) the evening before the run, or at Rice Park the morning of the run.
Contact Angie Teeter at theteeterfamily@cox.net or 620-327-4434 for more details.
Tee-off for the annual MCC benefit golf tournament, a four-person scramble, is set for a shotgun start at 8am, Saturday, May 9, at the Hesston Golf Course. More information and a registration form is available here.
For more information contact Gregg Dick at 316-283-1366, 316-772-6361, or e-mail greggd@bethelks.edu.
Motorcyclists have a special opportunity to raise money for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) by participating in the 2009 MCC Ride for Relief scheduled Sunday, May 3. The ride begins at King Memorial Park in Hesston, and the destination is Salina Mennonite Church, arriving in time for the Sunday morning worship service. Helmet time is 8:15am. Lunch is to be provided at the church.
A donation of $25 per bike qualifies you to participate. In case of inclement weather, the ride will be set for May 17. To register call Lelyn Peters, 620-327-2256, or Daryl Regier, 620-345-8531, by April 30.