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October 22, 2009

Brat Fest shows Lutheran heritage

Kevin Kerr

DUNCAN — The sweet smells of bratwurst and sauerkraut filled the air at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Thursday as it held their annual Brat Fest event for the community.

“It’s just a wonderful community activity,” pastor David Heitner said. “People are getting good food and are here to just have a good time and visit with one another.”

Heitner has been with Good Shepherd for two and a half years and said the Brat Fest has always been a great event for the church.

“It’s a great way to introduce ourselves to the community,” Heitner said. “It lets them see who the Lutherans are and shows them a little bit of our German heritage.”

The event took place during lunch and dinner hours on Thursday and received close to 500 people for food.

“We cooked 500 brats,” church member Julie McKinney said, “and we only have about 20 left.”

The church saw a mostly packed crowd during dinner, and sold 214 tickets just for lunch on the day.

“I really think it was a great turnout,” McKinney said.

All of the food cooked Thursday was authentic, German food, and most was homemade, including the German hot potato salad and every one of the desserts.

Good Shepherd member Jodith Grundmann said that she has been with the church for close to 20 years, and that this is an event that the church has been doing for about 15 years.

“It started back when Duncan had it’s Fall Fest,” Grundmann said. “The church had a booth that sold bratwursts at the event.

“When they quit having Fall Fest, we decided to start having it here at the church. We took a couple years off, but the community still loves it.”

Grundmann and Heitner both said that Lutherans aren’t near as populous in this area as some other denominations and people may not know as much about them as other churches.

“But when someone finds out you’re Lutheran in this area, they want to know when the Brat Fest is,” Grundmann said laughing.

Grundmann also praised the other members of the church saying that it is a group effort to do something like this.

“You hear that saying ‘You’ve got 20 percent doing 80 percent of the work.’ Well it doesn’t work like that, we have to have every member help with this, and they really do a great job.”

The atmosphere of the fellowship hall was bustling with people running into old friends and almost constant laughter, most of which was coming from the church members and volunteers themselves.

“You have to have fun with what you’re doing,” McKinney said, “and we have a lot of fun doing this.”

Unfortunately this year’s Brat Fest has come and gone, but next year’s is only 12 months away.

“Maybe we’ll even have some live entertainment next year,” Heitner said chuckling. “Possibly some accordions or some kind of polka music.”

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