By Jessica Isaacs and Emily Willis
Enjoy some down-home country cooking and discover an endless array of home goods, toys, clothes for the whole family, books, videos, electronics, furniture, sporting equipment and so much more at Boone United Methodist Church’s 32nd annual Fall Bazaar on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16-17.
The sale will take place at the church, 471 New Market Blvd. in Boone, from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday and from 7:30-11 a.m. on Saturday. New this year, there will be a half-price sale in select departments starting at 3 p.m. on Friday.
“This is one of our biggest church events,” said bazaar co-chair Doris Thompson. “People can’t believe we pull it off, and we can’t believe it, either.”
Be sure to come hungry! For breakfast both days, purchase country ham or sausage biscuits ($2 each), plain biscuits ($1 each) and tea and coffee ($1 each). For lunch on Friday, get your hands on a plate of barbecue for $8 (children’s plates available, too). Proceeds from the barbecue will support Grace Academy.
A silent auction will offer up high-end items until 6 p.m. on Friday.
Saturday’s event will also feature a $6 and $10 “bag sale,” where you can take home “anything you can fit in the bag.”
Spanish-English translators will be on-hand to assist shoppers on Saturday, too.
Thompson said the bazaar offers BUMC church members a chance to reconnect with friendly faces and make new friends within the congregation.
“It raises money, but it also builds community. Businesses pay major bucks for people to come in and lead community building exercises, but there’s no better way to get to know somebody than by folding stacks of clothes together side-by-side or doing mundane things to prepare for the sale where you can talk and have heavy duty conversations,” said Thompson. “Boone Methodist has three different worship services, as well as small groups and Sunday School, and the bazaar crosses over all of those groups, so you get to meet and greet with people you would never see in a month of Sundays.”
It’s also a great opportunity for the church to give back to the community.
“Most importantly, it gives us a chance to donate to local nonprofits. Four agencies will be lifted up and will receive a check depending on the proceeds of the bazaar, but others will receive in-kind donations,” Thompson said. “For instance, the humane society will receive bedding. It may not be appropriate for you and I because it has a stain on it, but for a dog or cat coming out of surgery to lay on, it’s wonderful.”
Other agencies receiving useful items from the bazaar include the Hospitality House, the Children’s Council, Habitat for Humanity, Hebron Colony, Hunger and Health Coalition, OASIS, Project on Aging, Red Bird Mission and the Watauga County Health Department.
“We do our best to be a beacon of hope for the folks in Watauga County,” said Thompson.
The church will also be distributing $25 gift cards for shopping at the bazaar that will be distributed to schools in Avery, Ashe and Watauga counties and agencies like Hunger and Health Coalition, OASIS and the Hospitality House, which will allow local families in need a chance to shop for items they can use at the bazaar.
Head out to Boone UMC this weekend to shop anything and everything at the Fall Bazaar. See you there!
For more information, call 828-264-6090 or visit www.booneumc.org.