Fair has dual message: have fun and help restore church

By Owen Boss

TEMPLETON — The First Church of Templeton held its annual Country Fair & Flea Market on the town Common Saturday, as a way for members of the parish to come together with the people of the town for a day of fun while raising money for renovations to their almost 200-year-old church. Event coordinator Carol Stanley said that although the spring fair acts as a fundraiser for the church, which will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2011, the real reason it was organized was to do something nice for the people in the community. “We feel as a church that planning events like this is what churches should do,” said Ms. Stanley. “It’s nice because our church was unable to things like this five years ago — we didn’t have the people and we didn’t have the know-how. We stopped and asked ourselves ‘how can we help out the community,’ and we are trying to do a lot more of that as a church.” According to Ms. Stanley, the attendance of the spring fair has grown significantly in recent years and as its popularity has grown, the church has made a conscious effort to include activities geared toward children. The activities this year included a performance by local magician Ed the Wizard and a dog show. “The dog show was a lot of fun; we had about a dozen dogs and they were all different breeds,” said Ms. Stanley. “The show was put on to raise money for the Templeton dog shelter and they ended up getting a lot of contributions.” All of the dogs that participated in the event received ribbons and the price of admission was a dog or cat food donation. The church also included a booth that benefited the Templeton Food Pantry, which held a quilt raffle to raise money so that no one in the area will go hungry this summer because of inadequate supplies. “We have one table that we put up for the food pantry and the Council on Aging, and we asked that people in attendance bring food to donate,” said Ms. Stanley. “It has been very successful in the past and we expect the quilt raffle will raise a lot of money for the less fortunate members of the community.” oboss@thegardnernews.com

Appeared on Page 3 on 6/2/2008 (Vol. 206 No. 130)