Grace Lutheran salad luncheon has community in mind

The Grace Lutheran Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) held a salad luncheon at their church along East Elm Avenue in Waseca on Friday, April 17. The dining room was nearly full to bursting with 75 guests within the first half hour.

 

Linda Born, who was taking tickets at the door, said, "We're equipped to take up to 125 at a time, but we’re not quite there yet.” It was only 11:30 a.m. and the lunch went on till 1 p.m., “So,” added Born, "we'll probably see a few more through the door yet.” Either way, she admitted to being impressed with the early numbers.

 

Event organizer Kathy Maxon was hard at work next to the serving tables set up near the kitchen. She summarized, “We have 35 salads here today. No matter what kind of salad a person wants, they can get it here. There are 12 ladies volunteering, cleaning tables and setting them. There are also ladies in the kitchen and going around asking patrons if anyone needs anything.” She pointed nearby and said, “We also offer a to-go option for those on the run. We bought the buns from Walmart, all the salads were donated, that includes the labor, from those members of the Women of ELCA.”

 

While she gave a quick tour of the proceedings Maxon added, “We do these salad luncheons not just for the fundraising, but for the community. In town here, and usually at one of the churches, there is an event like this every week, be it salads or potato bars. These events should be held every weekend, and it doesn’t matter which church it’s at. Waseca needs the fellowship, everyone does. People need to get out and talk more, meet up with people. The next luncheon we have at Grace will probably be the egg bake in the fall.” She said thank you to some people who were getting up to leave and added, “Even during our regular church services we try to have something simple, to give people a place to go, we might only have coffee, bars or cookies, but even that’s something, gets people in here, for us to meet them.”

 

The variety of options on the table included everything from coleslaw to taco salad, strawberry fruit salad, deviled egg salad and deviled eggs. Assorted potato salads, broccoli sunflower seed salad, spinach, mandarin orange, tuna, super salmon salad, marshmallow salad (both pink and green) and many more. All proceeds for the day went to missions, added Maxon, “Not just the local mission, but the nationwide one as well; we donate to both.”