by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
It looked as if the sky had rained Christmas cookies instead of cats and dogs.
On Dec. 5, the lobby of First United Methodist Church in Sartell was filled with cookies, thousands of cookies. Two-hundred dozen batches of cookies, to be exact. That’s 2,400 cookies.
Parishioners weren’t surprised, however, because Dec. 5 was Cookie Walk day at the church, an annual fundraiser. It started about six years ago to help fund improvements in the former church on Fifth Avenue S. in St. Cloud. Later, it was held to raise funds for Sunday-school rooms. This year the money will go toward funding a Prairie Restoration project, which will involve planting natural prairie grasses all around the church on South Pinecone Road.
Down the long hallway of the church, leading to the kitchen-dining hall, nine long tables were set up, end-to-end and covered with red tablecloths. The total length of the joined tables was 54 feet. Then, on the long, long table were placed rows of cookies, colorful cookies that included chocolate-chip cookies, coconut macaroons, brightly frosted sugar cookies, almond-bark cookies and corn-flake wreathes, to name just a few. Visitors could buy the cookies by the dozen or pay $12 for a bucket of them.
About 50 women and even some men baked the cookies to donate, and many children helped decorate them.
United Methodist Women volunteers helped organize and staff the event.
By the end of the day, there were a mere handful of cookies and some crumbs left on the table. The sale raised about $650.
The cookies on this table are all that’s left of the many thousands baked locally for the annual Cookie Walk event at First United Methodist Church in Sartell. It is dubbed a Cookie Walk because customers take their time walking down a long hallway past a long table filled with row after row of cookies before they make their tasty selections. From left to right are Cathy Danzl, St. Cloud; Liz Raehsler, Sauk Rapids; and Peggy Krull-Bordewick, St. Cloud. All are members of First United in Sartell.
A heart-shaped tin of fanciful cookies awaits a customer purchase at the Cookie Walk Dec. 5 in Sartell.
The thousands of home-baked cookies at First United Methodist Church in Sartell went like hot cakes in a matter of hours during the church’s annual Cookie Walk Dec. 5. Virtually every kind of Christmas-cookie decoration and flavor was available at the sale.
