St. Paul's Episcopal Church holds annual Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner

MEDINA — The smell of pancakes and sausage filled St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Tuesday during the youth group's annual Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner. "(This) is our way to celebrate entering the Lent liturgical season, and our proceeds are helping our youth mission trip this summer," said Caleb Parker, who serves as the senior warden for St. Paul's vestry. For more than 20 years, St. Paul's Episcopal Church has held a Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner to benefit the youth group's mission trip for the following summer. Each year, the youth group chooses somewhere to go help for a mission trip, whether it be places in great need, like Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, or somewhere they can work on service projects for the community. This year, the youth group will travel to Pennsylvania to work with local service organization Mustard Seed Missions. The youth group has traveled to Pennsylvania to work with Mustard Seed Missions several times, repairing homes and doing other tasks to help community members. Bret Lawrence, 15, said this will be his second time traveling to Pennsylvania for a mission trip. He recalled that during the last trip, the youth group spent a week helping Mustard Seed Missions with what needed to be done. Lawrence has taken part in the Shrove Tuesday pancake dinner for several years. This year, he helped serve the community members coming in for food, bringing out plates of freshly made pancakes, sausage, bowls of applesauce and drinks. In addition to the youth community acting as servers, the church leadership and members filled the kitchen, mixing up large bowls of pancake batter to be cooked on several griddles as others prepared the orders with sausage and finished pancakes. Parker said the pancake dinner gives a nice sense of the St. Paul Episcopal Church community. "It's important for everyone to give back and our vestry and our youth together volunteer," Parker said. "It's a nice team-building activity. Instead of us worshipping together on Sundays. It's a different experience for us to get together and be in community." Contact reporter Sara Crawford at (330) 721-4063 or scrawford@medina-gazette.com.