Recipe Book generates funds for Liebenthal’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church
By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com
It might surprise you to discover how a small community can cook up a successful solution to raise funds. The community is Liebenthal, situated between Fox Valley to the south and Leader to the north. It’s a hamlet with a total population of five and a rural population of 85.
Liebenthal is considered the southern gateway to the Great Sandhills Ecological area and is home to the Liebenthal Community Hall and the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. This church was first started in 1914, and the present building was erected in 1967. There are currently seventeen families on the church roster, with about 30 regular members attending.
Five of those members, namely Paulette Garrett, Donna Wagner, Nancy Mastel, Crystal Bosch and Joan Wagner, put their heads together and came up with publishing a cookbook to generate funds for their church. “Our church was closed for twelve weeks in 2020, and some families moved away, so the church needed some extra income,” Joan Wagner explained.
They put out the word on social media that they were looking for recipes, and before long, they had acquired 507 recipes from at least that many people.
“Our original goal was 400 recipes, but we ended up with 507,” Joan said.
All the recipes were mailed to the printers in Winnipeg in late October of 2020, and it didn’t take long before the committee received a copy which they proofread before sending back the revisions. After they approved the final document, the first order of 350 copies arrived on December 4, 2020, just in time for Christmas.
But the orders kept coming in, so they increased the amount to 500. Copies were placed in local businesses in Fox Valley, Leader, Sceptre, Burstall and Medicine Hat, but most of the sales occurred through word of mouth and on social media. By March 2021, all 500 copies were sold, and the fundraiser had generated $5,600 to help out their local parish.
“We were surprised and happy to see that so many sold,” Joan said. The finished product pictured the newly painted church building on the cover, and the back cover boasted a replica of the original church building. The inside front cover shows a photo of the interior of the present church building.
It’s incredible how the combination of a tiny community plus 507 recipes was able to help out their local church.
