Conference by the numbers.

• 3,200 final registration number for the 2011 Annual Conference. This number includes 861 delegates as well as the nondelegates who attended.
  
  
• 388 peak number of online viewers of Annual Conference webcasts, during the Tuesday afternoon discussion of Special Response business. Other points of highest participation in the webcasts were the Sunday evening business session Step 1 in the Special Response process (348), and the Tuesday morning session Step 4 of the process (346). Peak viewership for worship was on Tuesday, with 294 viewers.
  
  
• 185 people at the new delegate orientation.
  
  
• 150 walkers and runners in the annual 5K Fitness Challenge sponsored by Brethren Benefit Trust, on Sunday morning, July 3. Nathan Hosler was the overall winner for the second year in a row, coming in with a time of 17:24. Chelsea Goss finished at 21:43, claiming the first spot for female runners. Don Shankster was the first-place male finisher of the walking race with a time of 33:08. Paula Mendenhall took the first-place female walker with a time of 36:30.
  
  
• 2 new fellowship and 2 new congregations welcomed by Annual Conference: Renacer Roanoke, Va.; Peace Covenant Church, in the "triangle" area of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, N.C.; Light of the Gospel Fellowship, Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Mountain Dale Church in West Marva District.
  
  
• $53,352.33 received in the Conference offerings during worship, in a preliminary number yet to be confirmed by the Conference office.
  
  
• 4 mini quilts and quilted wall hangings auctioned for $5,085, to raise funds for hunger and the Global Food Crisis Fund.
  
  
• $3,240 raised in a silent auction of the district comforters that were brought as an offering during the first evening of the Conference. The original idea was to donate the comforters to Church World Service (CWS), but after seeing their beauty and quality Conference-goers suggested that a silent auction could raise the money to buy many more blankets for CWS. The total raised by the silent auction will buy 648 CWS blankets.
  
  
• 314 pounds of food representing 241 and a half meals given in Monday evening's offering of food to the West Michigan Food Bank. The junior and senior high groups helped to collect the offering and load it for transfer to the food bank.
  
  
• about 10 denominational staff, family members, and friends bicycled from Elgin, Ill.--location of the Church of the Brethren General Offices--to Grand Rapids, Mich., to attend Annual Conference. The two-day bike trip took a route via Milwaukee, Wis., and the ferry across Lake Michigan. Bicyclers included Nevin and Maddie Dulabaum, Becky Ullom, LeAnn Wine, Debbie Noffsinger, Anna Emrick, John Carroll, Joe Liu, Jeff Lennard, and Randy Miller, among others.
  
  
• 15th of October is the deadline to submit recipes for a new Brethren Press project. In an announcement titled "What's Cooking?" Conference-goers found out that a new "Inglenook Cookbook" is coming and Brethren Press needs recipes to include in it. Since 1901, the "Inglenook Cookbook" has been a tradition passed from generation to generation. The new cookbook project looks to follow in that same tradition by assembling the best recipes from today's kitchens. Submit recipes by Oct. 15, and help continue the tradition. To find more visit www.inglenookcookbook.org. The "Inglenook Cookbook": live simply, eat well.
  
  
• $1,000 donated by generous supporters of Brethren Press to provide gift certificates to Conference-goers this year to stock church or camp libraries. Four $250 gift certificates were won by Ridgely (Md.) Church of the Brethren, Northview Church of the Brethren in Indianapolis, Ind.; Elm Street Church of the Brethren in Lima, Ohio; and Camp Alexander Mack.

Source: 7/7/2011 Newsline