Henderson News Reprint
Written by Kerri Pankratz
YORK – Mennonites, you might say, are not big proponents of change. But a very big change took place this past weekend. The 46th Annual Nebraska Mennonite Relief Sale moved from the only location it’s ever known, the Hamilton County Fairgrounds in Aurora, to a new spot inside the Holthus Convention Center in York.
And yes, I said INSIDE! Which was a bonus considering Saturday proved to be your typical MCC Sale weekend… complete with cold, rain, and wind. Not only could you leave your multiple layers and mud-resistant shoes behind, but everything was in one building. No choosing between auctions or traipsing through the mud and gravel to stand in a long line to eat verenike.
“Aside from the technical issues on Friday night with the PA system that delayed the auction for a bit everything seemed to go pretty smoothly. Oh, and the chocolate for the ice cream bars didn’t arrive until Saturday,” said JayDee Janzen, one of the event’s organizers.
There were a few more issues than that, but all can be chalked up to either growing pains or the first year at a venue. For example, it was a fight for electricity inside Holthus on Thursday during set-up. The convention center had never before hosted an event in which multiple meals were served in one day, including the pancake feed, verenike, and Windsor loin meals. Not to mention the kitchen space for the freshly fried New Year’s Cookies.
The hundreds of roasters (I’m only slightly exaggerating) that warm the ham as well as the gravy for the verenike meal had to be located at the back of the stage behind the auctioneers. And instead of dragging four ancient stoves to the fairgrounds in order to cook verenike, one industrial version was available in the middle of New Year’s Cookie Central. Meanwhile, Verenike was fried by the Fry Guys in the “fry trailer” parked out back of the kitchen.
And speaking of New Year’s Cookie Central, the dough and frosting had to be mixed (the frosting, surprisingly, was mixed with a drill) and fried and then either glazed or sugared in the kitchen and runners were used to take them to their booth in the main ballroom for sale.
The main ballroom was where the majority of the action took place. One half was set up with chairs for the auction crowd with Kelly Kliewer and his crew from Kliewer’s Auction Service located up on the stage. Auction items were on tables lining one side of the audience while the Donation Check-In, Bidder Numbers, and Settlements Booth (basically all the computers) were set up on the other side.
The quilt racks, displaying the donated quilts, divided the room, and according to MCC Board Co-Chair Brad Janzen, “The quilts finally got their due.”
This was in reference to the fact that in past years, you had to pick which auction to attend, such as the general auction, and the quilt auction took place at the same time in different buildings. The quilts were always in the smaller building thus a smaller crowd. Quilt runners had to adjust to the larger crowd as it was a bit more difficult to find and reach bidders but this year everyone saw the quilts. And I mean everyone, as another new feature was the giant screens surrounding the entire ballroom that allowed you to watch the auction from anywhere in the room.
You could watch the screens from the auction audience or from the back of the ballroom, which was set up with round tables for all of the meals. You could even watch the auction from the front lobby where at the last minute more round tables had to be added in order to accommodate the overflow of sale goers looking for a place to sit in order to enjoy the noon meals.
Food lines were set up in the hallway outside of the kitchen and on the other side of the ballroom the facility’s smaller conference rooms were used for the Kids Corner/Kids Auction, Ten Thousand Villages and The Marketplace featuring all of the priced foods.
Friday night’s auction started in the traditional way with the singing of 606, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”. Highlights on Friday were the sales of a bag of Pioneer Seed Corn for $1,600 and a quilted pillowcase for $875. All totaled the sale brought in around $180,000. That amount includes goods auctioned off, goods sold, and of course, food. On the food side, there were 521 Verenike meals and 200+ Windsor Loin meals sold over the noon hour on Saturday alone. That’s not even including the Friday night meal or Saturday’s breakfast.
A few things didn’t change: Saturday morning’s auction began with the sale of a single loaf of bread, which brought $250. The bread auction is a tradition that has been going on for all 46 years of the sale. And then, of course, there’s the purpose of the MCC Sale… to raise funds in support of the Mennonite Central Committee, a Christian nonprofit charitable organization that works for relief, development, and peace in more than 40 countries. That purpose will never change.
