Looking for options?
Here are several opportunities to help with the 2016 Fall Festival:

·OPTION #1: Coordinate the children’s activities. Interested? Contact Linda Pauls, jlad_pauls@msn.com
    
·OPTION #2:  Team up to make small wooden crafts for the Country Store. Join with other woodworkers to share ideas and projects. Interested? Contact Mark Diller, mark.diller@live.com

·OPTION #3: Love food? Help serve salad, soups, and sack lunches. Helpers also needed for prep work and clean up. Contact Julia Todd, 0926jrt@gmail.com ■

Looking to get involved?
Here are several opportunities to help with the 2016 Fall Festival:
 
· Coordinate the children’s activities. Interested? Contact Linda Pauls, jlad_pauls@msn.com
 
· Team up to make small wooden crafts for the Country Store. Join with other woodworkers to share ideas and projects. Interested? Contact Mark Diller, mark.diller@live.com
 
· Love food? Help serve salad, soups, and sack lunches. Helpers also needed for prep work and clean up. Contact Julia Todd, 0926jrt@gmail.com

Throughout the year, hundreds of people work together to make a difference around the world. Many volunteer opportunities are still available! Especially needed are folks who are:

Good with chairs, books (set up), or brooms (clean up): Tasks ranging from setting up tables and chairs to organizing used books. Report to the Willamette Building at 9 a.m. or anytime thereafter on Friday. Book sorting starts around 10 a.m. Cleanup crew is also needed. Jobs include low-impact tasks like sweeping. Starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Contact Larry Passmore: 541-752-1561, passmorecl@yahoo.com.

Good with displays, presentations, and watching the clock (auction set up and implementation): On Friday extra hands are needed to hang up quilts then take them down and display them Saturday as the auction proceeds. Contact Margery Barkman: 503-266-7854, msbarkman@canby.com. Assistants also needed to run the main auction and silent auction on Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Contact Tim Steiner, 503-381-6436, oregonfestivalauction@gmail.com.

Good for food and dishes:  Setup helpers in the foods area Friday beginning at 9 a.m. as well as cleanup helpers. Volunteers to wash dishes through the day, to serve soup and salad lunch, and be cashiers at the food booths. Contact Julia Todd, 541-258-3581, 0926jrt@gmail.com.

Good with cash and cheese: People to sell meats and cheese as well as serve as cashier at the Country Store. Contact Denise Diller, 541-704-0451, markdenised@hotmail.com. ■

1. Auction donations are starting to arrive, and they’re creating a buzz on Facebook! What can you give to support MCC? Let us know about your donation by contacting Tim Steiner, 503-381-6436, oregonfestivalauction@gmail.com.

2. Quilters and crafters: Your donations of fabric, patterns, quilt books and magazines, craft things, unfinished quilts/craft/sewing projects, old linens and dollies, and sewing notions will delight festival-goers. Please deliver gifts for Marta’s Haus by October 1 to Fairview Mennonite Church (35100 Goltra Road, Albany) or call Julie Miller, 541-754-7533.

3. School kit items are often featured in back-to-school specials: spiral or perforated notebooks (8 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄2 in and 70 sheets), pencils, rulers (flat, flexible plastic; indicating both 30 cm and 12 in), colored pencils (12 in packaging), large pencil erasers. Bring them to the festival. ■

Volunteering a few hours at the festival and/or set-up day is a wonderful way to make a difference for people in need worldwide. Could you lend a hand this year? How about recruiting some family members to help with you, or a small group from church? There are tasks for all ages. Here are some of the most pressing needs:

 
Quilts
· One physically active/strong person to orchestrate the display operation on Friday and then the take down on Saturday as the quilts are removed to be sold
· Auction helpers to display both sides of the quilts as they are being sold
· Setup helpers on Friday beginning at 9 a.m.

Contact Margery Barkman: 503-266-7854, msbarkman@canby.com

Auction
· Individual to coordinate the display of auction items on Friday
· Helpers to hold up items as they are being auctioned
· Setup helpers on Friday and cleanup helpers on Saturday (stacking chairs, moving tables, etc.)
· People to help display silent auction items on Saturday 
· Person to remove silent auction tables when items have been sold

Contact Tim Steiner, 503-381-6436, oregonfestivalauction@gmail.com

Food
· 1-3 people to wash dishes throughout the day
· 8 people to serve soup and salad lunch
· 6-8 cashiers for food booths
· Setup helpers in the foods area Friday beginning at 9 a.m.
· Cleanup helpers on Saturday beginning at 3 p.m.

Contact Julia Todd, 541-258-3581, 0926jrt@gmail.com
 
Country Store
· People to sell meats and cheese
· Cashiers

Contact Denise Diller, 541-704-0451, markdenised@hotmail.com

The next public PNMHS will be April 19, 2015 at Lebanon Mennonite Church (2100 S. 2nd St.) at 2:30 pm. The gathering will celebrate thirty years of faithfulness in raising funds for Mennonite Central Committee through the Oregon Festival for World Relief. Long-time West Coast MCC board member, Bill Braun, will be the speaker. Bill was part of the original team that started the OR sale and he served with MCC in Kentucky. Visit www.pnmhs.org, or email pnwmennonite@canby.com for more information.

At this special time of year, here’s a shout-out of grateful thanks to all those who contributed to the 2014 Oregon Mennonite Festival for World Relief. We praise God for this wonderful opportunity to work together to help people in need. Through our united efforts, this year’s festival raised $128,000 for Mennonite Central Committee, with additional funds raised at the dinner concerts held this summer.

Every year, it is amazing to see this all-volunteer effort in action. It could not happen without the commitment and generosity of literally hundreds of people. 


We wish we could thank each individually, but here are few we just have to mention:

The auction crew: our fantastic auctioneer Brad Caldwell and his head spotter Jeremy Gillis; the donation transport/set-up crew including Warde Hershberger, Richard Kropf, and Lynn Miller; Charlene Schultz, Joanne Mitchell, and their team of clerks and cashiers; silent auction leads (and more) Don and Judy Bacher; projection technician Jon Dilbone; announcers Dianna Eshleman, Pat Hershberger, Cynthia Hockman-Chupp, and many more volunteers.


Our quilters: talented sewers blessed with skilled fingers and artistic hearts, plus all those who helped display these handcrafted treasurers at their best, including Larry and Karen Graber, Maurice and Joan Imhoff, Jerry Barkman, Pat Hershberger, and Alice Hill.

All our generous donors, including our woodworkers. An anonymous donor made the quilt auction especially exciting this year by providing matching funds for pre-selected quilts if they reached a certain bid. More than $3,000 was raised through “blessing bids” in the auction, plus $1,000 for a pan of cinnamon rolls made by festival chairman Ron Litwiller. 


Speaking of baking…
Cooks and bakers, including the incredible George and Aimee Hunt (see next page). Many of our booth leads have been volunteering for the festival for more than 20 years, such as Booney and Chanh Syravong (1,200 homemade spring rolls per year!), Gary and Brenda Burch (breakfast managers, who have donated this food), and Karen and Rich Kropf (sausage). It was a special treat this year to enjoy pozole and homemade tortillas from Comunidad Cristiana de Vida Neuva and Salem Mennonite Church. 

Some extra special business partners: Fair Trade Gifts and Décor in Lebanon manages their own booth and provides invaluable promotion leading up to the event. Mennonite Village has been doing more and more: providing soups, sack lunches, the beverage trailer, extra refrigerators, storage for auction items, golf carts and volunteers to drive them. Friends from Fry Road Nursery have long run the Garden Shop. And for years, Cascade Casework (formerly Lemons Millwork) in Albany has provided storage in between festivals while Stan Boshart and his crew from Boshart Trucking and SJB Farms in Tangent provide and move the straw bales. 

All our other volunteers, including store managers, children’s activity leaders, the Festival String Band, massage therapist Hannah Field, set-up/clean-up crews, and a group of 18 students from Western Mennonite School.

 

Throughout the year, hundreds of people work together to make a difference around the world. Many volunteer opportunities are still available! 

Especially needed are folks who are:

Good with chairs, books (set up), or brooms (clean up): Tasks ranging from setting up tables and chairs to organizing used books. Report to the Willamette Building at 9 a.m. or anytime thereafter on Friday. Book sorting starts around 10 a.m. Cleanup crew is also needed. Jobs include low-impact tasks like sweeping. Starts at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Contact Larry Passmore: 541-752-1561, passmorecl@yahoo.com.

Good with displays, presentations, and watching the clock (auction set up and implementation): On Friday extra hands are needed to hang up quilts then take them down Saturday as the auction proceeds. Contact Margery Barkman: 503-266-7854, msbarkman@canby.com. Assistants also needed to run the main auction and silent auction on Saturday, starting at 8 a.m. Contact Tim Steiner, 503-381-6436, steinertm@comcast.net.

Good with kids (children’s activities): Assist with craft activities and the children’s scavenger hunt. One hour shifts take place on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Contact Heather Gingrich: 503-318-9550, hehelo@comcast.net.

Good with money (food booths): In lieu of tickets each food booth will have a cash box this year, so we need people to take money and make change. One or two hour shifts on Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Contact Barb Buxman: 503-522-5324, bbbuxman@gmail.com.

~ ATTENTION KIDS ~
Good with art (decorating food bags): Sack lunches will be available for children this year, and kids are needed to help decorate the bags -- maybe on the festival’s water theme? Contact Julia Todd, 541-258-3581, 0926jrt@gmail.com.