Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, located at 502 Lafayette Ave. in Palmerton, held its annual fall bazaar and lunch bag raffle this past Saturday.

Church members sold lunch bag raffle tickets for over 220 prizes, and also sold homemade food, including soups, barbecue, filling, halupki, hash brown casserole and desserts. The gathering has become an event that church members look forward to.

“We’ve been doing this for about 40 years,” said Church Council treasurer and lifelong member Larry Arner.

In addition to the prizes and food, Arner said the church was selling raffle tickets for a custom-made queen-size quilt made by parishioner Barbara Walck.

Arner added that the church has a thrift shop open from 9 a.m. to noon every Tuesday.

“With many of the donations to the thrift shop, we use that to help out fire victims that need assistance,” Arner said.

The church donates clothing and household items that victims of house fires might need.

Several members of the church were enjoying the food in the Tea Room, which was recently renovated. There was also a room dedicated to Christmas-themed items for sale.

Many food items were available for purchase at the church event, but perhaps the most popular was the molasses tongue cookies.

Parishioner Teri Delich made 160 dozen of the popular cookies to sell at the bazaar.

“We made 500 dozen cookies for the festival, and got lots of compliments, and they sold out. So we decided to sell some again here at the church bazaar,” Delich said.

For more information about the church and its upcoming events, visit its website at https://www.holytrinitypalmerton.org/calendar/.