BY DUSTIN LAWRENCE

dlawrence@etruth.com

Firman Gingerich poured the pancake batter over the portable griddle on the April morning in Blooming Glen, Pennsylvania. He was joined by 24 volunteers, all with the same goal -- raising money for their brethren of faith in the Elkhart area.

By the end of the April 19 breakfast there was $8,200 raised for the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference.

"We had several farming families in the church," said Gingerich, lead pastor at

the Blooming Glen Mennonite Church, about the idea for the breakfast. "They remembered when they received of some grain and hay during a drought. They spoke up at a meeting and said, 'We were the recipients of some help when we needed it, how about we help those in Elkhart.'"

The generosity didn't go unnoticed within the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference.

"This came from a memory of being helped and then being compelled to help others," said Dan Miller, the conference's lead pastor. "That completes a cycle."

Miller says the money is still being allocated to structures that are already within the conference's churches but adds that such generosity will be felt in the community as a whole.

"We are often thinking about helping others but when you're on the receiving end," Miller said, pausing briefly. "Humbling is so trite a word -- It warms your heart."