The dark clouds and the rain was the perfect weather this past Friday for a homemade hot soup lunch from the First United Methodist Church Holiday Bazaar and Luncheon. The two day event was held this past Friday and Saturday and had several rooms with craft vendors and a steady flow of people at the Friendship Café down below on both days.
Church member and organizer Lynda Silva explained that Fridays is more of a delivery type day with lunches getting delivered by church members to staff at several schools in the area along with businesses like the Crossroads Shopping Center and the Riverbank Industrial Complex as well as people that are unable to leave their homes.
There were over 100 deliveries made on Friday and there were shoppers that braved the storm shopping to their full delight.
Craft tables had purses, jewelry, bows, sunglasses, tutus, scarves, magnets, candy and holiday items on hand for customers.
Pastor Ofa Haunga was in the kitchen stirring up the soups and serving guests that preferred to dine in. People enjoyed the homemade soups, slices of pie for dessert, and refreshments that were offered like coffee, lemonade and water to wash it all down.
The United Methodist Women have been organizing and hosting the holiday bazaar and lunch for approximately 30 years. They have had the same menu for the past 10 years consisting of soup and beans including chicken noodle, corn chowder, cream of broccoli, vegetable beef, white beans with ham and Portuguese beans with linguica and for dessert a variety of pies like apple, banana cream, chocolate, coconut cream and pumpkin, just to name a few. All the soups are homemade by the women’s group.
Diane Talbert with the Royal Neighbors helped with the event and had a craft table offering several different items for sale to help fund the upcoming Veteran’s Luncheon on Nov. 12.
The Bag-a-Rama had a variety of gift certificates that were raffled off from Pizza Plus, Cruisers gas card, El Ranchito, Cool Hand Lukes, Target, Baskin Robbins, and a $100 certificate for O’Brien’s Market.
“It has been very steady all day and we have had a lot of people, really good turnout,” stated Silva. “We appreciate everyone that came out.”
