Central United Methodist Church Hosted A Way To Beat The Cold

Inflatables were just one part of the various activities at a winter carnival hosted by Central United Methodist Church.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The center court of Penn Central Mall was filled with laughter, and kids of all ages enjoyed the inflatables and lazer tag from Lazer Alley, games from Mahaska Drug, and Tom Terrific making ballons.

Central United Methodist Church in Oskaloosa was facilitating the Sunday afternoon of fun. Paster Bruce Wittern said that the event “is a bridge event.”

“It’s an opportunity to minister to the community to show Christ’s love to the community and we thought we’ve got a great mall here and thought families might want something to do when they’re getting cabin fever in the winter and so this idea involved. Last year we had 297 children registered, that didn’t count the adults. I think we got a little more than that this year but we haven’t got a final count yet.”

Fareway, Hy-Vee, and Breadeaux Pizza all helped out by making donations. “So it’s a cooperative effort,” added Wittern.

During the summer, Wittern explained that they also host a fishing derby at Edmundson Pond. “That’s had a limited crowd, but 50, 60, 70 people come out. In the last couple of years we’ve done it on the weekend that has free fishing so they can fish legally without a license. Maybe the first two years we did that, very few people caught fish. Since then, we’ve been stocking the pond. The last couple of years everybody caught fish. It’s a lot more fun when you’re catching fish. And we might think about it too, Jesus calls us to be fishers of men and women. We’re trying to reach out and if anyone needs some love and care, that’s what our churches are for in our community. We just appreciate the community’s involvement. Mike Gipple and the mall staff have been wonderful and we’ve appreciated their cooperation as well.”

Wittern also thanked the Boy Scouts for their volunteer efforts.