Glamis bar donates nailed-down cash

When a local youth group began brainstorming various fundraising ideas to send high school students to church camp, they never imagined that God would answer their prayers in the way that he did.

The First Christian Church youth group in Yuma was recently presented with the opportunity to remove thousands of $1 bills off of the outside of a bar to be used as a donation to their cause. The bills have been stapled to the building over the past 30 years by customers, covering almost every inch of the facility.

The catch? It's actually a lot harder than it sounds.

Each $1 bill has anywhere from a few staples to dozens of staples securing it to the building that need to be removed to keep the money from ripping.

Jeanne Boardman, owner of the Boardmanville Trading Post in Glamis, said that with the reopening of her bar she was looking to oil the outside of the log cabin-style building that her husband had built back in the 1980s.

At the suggestion of her friend Kathy Godley, Boardman enlisted the help of the FCC youth group to take the money off her hands as she could not remove it all by herself.

“The building needs to be treated and then people can start putting dollar bills back up,” she said. “I thought about it and I can't physically do it myself and so I talked with Kathy about the group coming out because it would help them out and it would help me out too. It's been great. They've been so nice, they are very well-behaved, they have fun together, they're very polite and they work hard. I just really appreciate it. It helps me out a lot.”

One month and over $13,000 later, the youth group now has enough funds to take four times the amount of students to a Christ in Youth (CIY) camp they are planning to attend next summer.

FCC youth pastor Jeff Elzey said that initially, they were planning to raise funds for just 10 additional students to go to CIY after being given a challenge card that encouraged them to do so at camp this year.

“The challenge card was for the entire group,” he said. “They had to vote to either open the card and do what it says, or to not open it. They voted to open it and accept the challenge, which was to raise funds to bring 10 friends to camp next year who have not ever been to camp. At a cost of $350 per student, that is a total of $3,500 that they were challenged to raise.”

This is the same camp, he said, that encouraged a high school student the year before to raise $5,000 to build a community well in Zambia, Africa; which the youth group accomplished by holding bake sales, wrapping gifts during the holidays at Sam's Club, Christmas carolling and through other various fundraisers.

Yuma High School senior Matthew Higgins, 18, said that he enjoyed his time helping pull dollars off the bar in Glamis and is very grateful for the opportunity to raise so much money to take additional students to attend camp.

“Camp has definitely changed my life and I'm a better person because of it,” he said.

Fellow youth group member Lenitza Padilla, 17, a senior at Gila Ridge High School agreed and shared that camp helps her to get a new perspective on life and realize what is really important.

“You can't realize some things when you're home caught up in all the drama,” she said. “But when you take yourself out of your normal environment and see life in a different perspective, from God's perspective, that's how it changes your life. When I'm at camp, I think, ‘I wish all my friends could be here,' but some of them can't because of the money, so it's cool that this will help other people gain that new perspective.”

Elzey added that during their time working in Glamis, students have often rearranged their schedules to go out and work for five to six hours at a time, also spending mealtimes at the bar with Boardman.

“This is an incredible opportunity,” Elzey concluded. “In my nine years of full-time ministry I have organized and participated in a lot of fundraisers, but none have ever come even close to being this productive. One of the main benefits to both myself and the other adult youth coaches and students has been the privilege of getting to know Jeanne. It is amazing that we can help her and raise so much money at the same time.”

Sarah Womer can be reached at swomer@yumasun.com or 539-6858. Find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/YSSarahWomer or on Twitter at @YSSarahWomer.