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Rachel Bevins and Judy Remsberg, co-chairs of the UUFP Auction, send a huge THANK YOU to the whole fellowship for your support in this fabulously fun event. You offered services or items; you came; you bid; you won; you dressed for the theme; you had fun—and, we made more for the support of the Fellowship than ever before!  Here are some highlights and pictures. Just for your information, it takes a village for sure to produce an event like this. All these volunteers below contributed a lot of time and effort to make this year’s auction a success:

• Food Team:Rachel Bevins, Martie and Barry Coy, Sandra Engelhardt, Ann, Tristan, and Kaitlyn Hancock for planning, shopping, prep, serving, and clean-up with attention to those with allergies or sensitivities
• Drinks and Mystery Cauldron: Randy Phillips, Dennis and Carole Shaw, and Rachel:  Shopping for beer and wine, selling, serving, wrapping and assisting with grab-bag gifts at the Cauldron. Steve Farthing procured the *alcohol permit.*
• Gift of Wine Glasses: Michael Henry-Richardson for the gift and the teens for decorating them with their creative, beautiful talents.
• PR Skits – Actors: Gabbie, Jason and Rachel Bevins, Mason Moseley. Steve Farthing, the mystery author. They all promoted the auction and at the same time made it entertaining and funny with the pun-ful scripts.
• Tabulation Team:Kathryn Ozyurt, Jeanne Farthing, Pat Yaros, for detailed record keeping (from the first email with an offer to the last sale), checkout, paperwork on tables for your use and ease of checkout, and big screen display facilitated by our teen volunteer, Tristan Hancock. Gayle Phillips, Tara Joseph, Hilary Propst, and Solstice O’Brien for silent auction and sanctuary set up and decoration, arrangement of silent auction items, tabulating these after closing of silent auction, taking care of the leftover items to ensure they were sold the next two Sundays.
• Event Set-Up: Randy and Jay, the helpful husbands; Tristan and Kaitlyn Hancock, the teens who helped with anything anyone asked them without groaning! They were present all day Saturday and that evening in good spirits with no complaints. Everyone wanted “to take them home”!
• Entertainment Solicitations for Bid: Solstice O'Brien for obtaining tickets or coupons to local museums, theaters, restaurants
• PR Team/Communications: David Walsh and Judy Remsberg
• Staff/Minister: Kay and Andrew for support in various ways
• Silent Auction: All members/friends who offered items for this featured auction activity
• Live Auction: All of you who offered goods, services and experiences for the live auction.
• YOU, the Participants! All who were present, who bid and those who won (!), plus those who bought a cauldron grab bag gift or a glass of wine/beer. Your presence made the evening so much fun!
• Event Wrap-up: Everyone present who pitched in to clean and set up the building for Sunday Services the next day.

The proceeds from the auction not only help support our Fellowship budget (this year, $11,000+ before expenses) but also generate camaraderie in planning and executing the auction evening. The various services and experiences bring together people who might not customarily gather for a lunch, games or evening out. The auction experiences provide an opportunity to know each other on a more personal level.

One short anecdote, which demonstrates the generous spirit of our members: An exercise bike donated by the Rinaldo’s didn’t receive any bids. So, Rich, with his innate humor, announced that we should bid on someone to take it to Goodwill. The bidding started after the laughter, and it was sold to Pat Sloan, taken to Goodwill by Randy Phillips, and the spirit of the auction was fulfilled!

THANK YOU ALL for each contribution to this far-reaching event—one that benefits us, individually and collectively as a fellowship, and helps create Beloved Community!

-Rachel Bevins and Judy Remsberg