The Iowa Mennonite Relief Sale is organized annually by over 20 Mennonite and other Anabaptist churches in Iowa, who come together to plan auctions, entertainment and meals to benefit the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC).
“The MCC started in the 1920s when the Mennonites in America realized that their Russian counterparts were starving, and so they made efforts to get the funds together for the relief of their brothers in Crimea and parts of Russia. In fact, they raised money to send tractors over there so they could start farming again after the Russian Bolshevik revolution,” said Don Patterson, co-chair of the Iowa Mennonite Relief Sale. “Knowing that they could raise these kinds of funds, they realized that there are other places in the world that could use help and relief, so the sales continued, and the fundraising efforts continued.
The MCC currently benefits over 60 different countries across the world, many of them war-torn and economically depressed.
“The concept behind it is, if you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but if you teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime,” Patterson said. “So, the efforts are not only to relieve the immediate burden, but to teach new ways of doing things in their country.”
Patterson said the sale is the collective effort of a variety of Anabaptist congregations.
“We’re all Anabaptists who take part in it, but it’s everything from Old Order Amish all the way to the most liberal congregations in our community — it’s something we all agree on, no matter where we sit theologically.
Everyone comes together to use their specific talents in ways to raise money for the MCC.
“We have a group out of Davenport, a Hispanic church, and they’re going to do a taco booth because they can make really good tacos. Since that’s their passion and they have the ability to do it, that’s what they do,” Patterson said. “We’ve had an apple fritter booth because we have a deep fat fryer and we have people from Hillcrest Academy who know how to do that, so that has been another booth. We have a lot of ladies who quilt, so they put their efforts into making beautiful quilts and we sell them at the sale and the money goes toward relief.”
The 2022 sale will take place in Iowa City at the Johnson County Fairgrounds on June 11, and will feature both an in-person and online auction.
More information about the Iowa Mennonite Relief Sale is available at: iamccreliefsale.org.
