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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; If you stop by St. Mary&#8217;s Byzantine Catholic Church on North Main Street this weekend and walk through the parking lot to the parish social hall on Madison Street, you&#8217;ll find the best part of the church&#8217;s summer festival, according to Hannah Bridgland.</p><p>&#8220;The games,&#8221; the 10 year-old volunteer specified.</p><p>&#8220;My booth,&#8221; she added.</p><p>Earlier this week, Hannah, who lives in Avoca, showed off the action figures, including Harry Potter&#8217;s friends Hagrid and Hermione and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man from the &#8220;Ghost-Busters&#8221; movie, she expects to award as prizes.</p><p>Of course, some people may attend the festival mainly to eat a &#8220;Slavic Platter&#8221; of pierogies, piggies and haluski with homemade noodles or they may, as one bazaar volunteer put it, &#8220;follow the potato pancake aroma.&#8221; For others, the dunk tank, the dart board or flea market bargains could be a big draw.</p><p>But Hannah has a point. The games at St. Mary&#8217;s festival seem to have a unique feel to them, thanks, in part, to the way chairperson Kathy Sakalas Hall spends her spare time.</p><p>&#8220;It relaxes me,&#8221; Hall said with a chuckle, admitting she carefully wrote &#8220;To: You, From: Me&#8221; on each of the many colorful envelopes people can win in a booth called &#8220;You&#8217;ve Got Mail.&#8221;</p><p>The envelopes contain gift certificates, lottery tickets and various amounts of cash.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the grab-bag appeal that really gets to people,&#8221; Hall said, explaining similar prizes are inside the bags she attached to small &#8220;Charlie Brown Christmas Trees&#8221; and decorated with one ornament apiece.</p><p>All of her handiwork, on top of organizing the bazaar, was time-consuming, but Hall enjoys it.</p><p>Her mother died when she was only 7 years old, she said, and her aunt, who watched over her, lived near the church and always helped with parish projects. So Hall pitched in, too.</p><p>She remembers working at bazaar stands more than 40 years ago as a member of the church youth group. Later, after she brought her husband, Bill, into the parish, they&#8217;d work a stand and, if one of their two now-grown daughters, Sarina or Katie, was the right age, they&#8217;d have her there in a baby carrier.</p><p>&#8220;The big joke,&#8221; Hall said, &#8220;was people would ask if they could choose the baby as a prize.&#8221;</p><p>This weekend, prizes you can take home range from designer purses to a Keurig coffee machine to wooden furniture.</p><p>And, if you venture to the second floor of the social hall, you&#8217;ll find a flea market where mother-and-daughter organizers Charlotte Linker and Karen Sepkoski, both of Wilkes-Barre, have been collecting items since early June.</p><p>A few days before opening night, they were arranging religious items, jewelry, seasonal decorations and knick knacks like wooden shoes that looked big enough for an adult to wear with a Netherlands costume.</p><p>&#8220;We priced all the shoes at $2 and all the purses at $3,&#8221; Sepkoski said, pointing to a row of gently used, conventional footwear and a table of gently used handbags.</p><p>&#8220;You never know what people will want to buy,&#8221; she added, looking meaningfully at some old phones with rotary dials.</p><p>A framed portrait of Pope Benedict, a plastic bank shaped like a dinosaur and a backgammon game in a leather box added to the mix.</p><p>&#8220;Someone might be in a .007 mood,&#8221; Sepkoski said as a visitor noticed an ice bucket with a handle shaped like a horse head.</p><p>This year, the flea market is selling desks and chairs from the parish&#8217;s former school, &#8220;lots of good, old movies&#8221; and even a wedding gown. &#8220;I think we&#8217;ll ask $15 for that,&#8221; Sepkoski said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Volunteer Ann Marie Popovitch, right, and Hannah Bridgland, 10, of Avoca, arrange prizes for a &#8216;silent auction&#8217; that will be part of the Aug. 5-7 bazaar at St. Mary&#8217;s Byzantine Catholic Church in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316stmary1.jpg</photo0><caption0>Volunteer Ann Marie Popovitch, right, and Hannah Bridgland, 10, of Avoca, arrange prizes for a &#8216;silent auction&#8217; that will be part of the Aug. 5-7 bazaar at St. Mary&#8217;s Byzantine Catholic Church in Wilkes-Barre. </caption0><photoCredit0>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316stmary2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Long-time bazaar volunteer Charlotte Linker looks over some of the items she and her daughter, Karen, have on display at the flea market held in conjunction with the bazaar at St. Mary&#8217;s Byzantine Catholic Church on North Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316stmary2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Long-time bazaar volunteer Charlotte Linker looks over some of the items she and her daughter, Karen, have on display at the flea market held in conjunction with the bazaar at St. Mary&#8217;s Byzantine Catholic Church on North Main Street in Wilkes-Barre. </caption1><photoCredit1>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316stmary3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Bazaar chairperson Kathy Hall takes a break from arranging the colorful envelopes at the &#8216;You&#8217;ve Got Mail&#8217; booth. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/web1_TTL080316stmary3.jpg</photo2><caption2>Bazaar chairperson Kathy Hall takes a break from arranging the colorful envelopes at the &#8216;You&#8217;ve Got Mail&#8217; booth. </caption2><photoCredit2>Sean McKeag | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>IF YOU GO</strong></p><p><strong>What: </strong>St. Mary&#8217;s Summer Festival</p><p><strong>Where: </strong>Parish social hall, 522 Madison St., Wilkes-Barre</p><p><strong>When:</strong> 5 to 10 p.m. Aug. 5 to 7</p><p><strong>Info:</strong> 570-822-6028.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Volunteers prepare bazaar at St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church