Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Palmerton donated $1,700 to the Palmerton Area High School Marching Band.

Representatives from the band were presented with a check during halftime at a recent home football game.The Rev. Michael Frost, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, said the money was raised from its sale of homemade sticky buns, molasses cookies and drinks during the Palmerton Community Festival in September.The church has participated in the event for many years and has a tradition of donating the net proceeds to a worthy cause.Frost said the church chooses the recipient through nominations from members who think an agency, organization or cause would be a worthy recipient. From there, the church council chooses three of them, and the congregation votes on which one will be the recipient."There have been years where there was just one recipient, but more often the proceeds are shared between two," he said.This year, the church had many nominations.The church council was told that the marching band had been established again after a number of years without one. The band director is Thomas Heinick. The council thought this was a worthy cause and chose the band as one of the three organizations for the congregation to vote on as the recipient. The other two were Holy Trinity's Sunday school program and the Lutheran World Relief, Frost said.After the vote, the marching band won as the congregation's first choice, followed by the Sunday school, so both organizations received funds from the festival proceeds."We are so pleased that Palmerton High School again has a marching band as a part of its program for the benefit of our own children and for the whole community," he said.Being actively connected to the life of the community is an important part of the church's ministry, Frost said."We are a congregation that understands the importance of music as a gift of God bringing joy and meaning to so much of life."He's thankful they were able to provide some financial support to the band to purchase whatever they need.The church's festival committee made participation in the fundraiser a possibility. It has been led by Veronica Blocker, the festival committee chairwoman, for a number of years, he said.The committee does much of the planning from food preparation to management, but there are also a great number of people who help by baking, packaging the sticky buns and cookies, working shifts over the three-day festival, and doing the actual selling."We are a community-minded congregation striving to be a part of Palmerton's life, serving in whatever ways we can for the good of the whole community, especially those in need," Frost said.