The annual Mercer Festival got off to a great start this year. As Jonathan Stube put it, “I thought the festival was excellent. I had a big smile on my face as I was running along cheering on all my friends from church. It was a great community building and outreach event.” The festival met or exceeded the organizing committee’s goals for the inaugural event.

Community outreach, supporting the REACH mission, and Fellowship were the three primary goals for the event, according to planning team leader Mark Steffler. The stated goal for the team was to introduce between 10 and 20 new families to the St. David’s community in the hopes that they choose to join our community over the next few months. While exact numbers are difficult to discern so close to the event, and with the festival being one of perhaps many factors in a family’s decision to join the community, volunteers did talk with several new families at the event. “We’ll know six months from now if we’ve met our outreach goal,” said Steffler.

The second goal was to contribute proceeds to the REACH mission. For the first year, organizers were hoping simply to break even. However while the final accounting is still not completed, the committee is confident that the festival will contribute more than $2,000 to REACH this year. Even the race itself exceeded expectations. Consultants had told the organizers that having fewer than 100 racers in an inaugural event is not unusual, especially in Spring with sports and other activities tying up family calendars. The planning team wanted to draw 100-150 racers from the parish community and an equal number from the wider community. More than 300 racers took part in the event. Brian Carnes won the 5k race with a time of 16:20, for a very quick mile pace of 5:17. Kristy Persons finished first among female racers with a time of 21:00 and a mile pace of 6:47. Full results can be found here (http://www.sdlife.org/Mercer-Festival-5K-and-Fun-Run/Race-Results).

The third goal was to have a fun event for the St. David’s community, and the planning team felt that the festival hit that mark as well. “There was a great energy in church the next day,” said Steffler, who also pointed out that people were still arriving for the event as late as 11:30 am. One parishioner in attendance later shared with me that, “There is great joy in attending an event with your family where you know everyone will be welcomed with open arms and have a good time. As we left, my five year old said ‘thanks so much mom, that was a lot of fun.’ We can’t thank St. David’s for being such a great community.”

The festival even exceeded plans for total sponsorship and for the volunteer effort. Jerry Hayes was particularly impressed: “I think it was great how the parish community came together for this event. Mark sent out the call for help and everyone showed up in full force. That's the way God wants it!” Seventy-five parishioners volunteered, helping with everything from the moon bounce and games to coming in on a weekday to learn how to be a flagger for the 5k race.

Steffler pointed out that the whole team, including Doug Steele, Gil Brady, Sean Conlin, Larry DeSimone, Carey Gettes, Pam Long, Jen Mattingly, Lawrence Panetta, and Carrie Velling, put in between two and three thousand hours of work for the festival and that everyone contributed. Their efforts combined with the support of our other parish ministries that work year round, made the event a huge success. Said Steffler, “Hopefully, with the foundation laid, next year’s team won’t have to work quite so hard.”