Sarah Short loves autumn.

That's one of the reasons she and her mom, Mary Martz, help organize a huge event at their church.

Lampeter United Methodist Church (UMC) will hold its fifth annual Community Fall Festival on Saturday, Oct. 18, from noon to 3 p.m. at the church, 1101 Village Road, Lancaster.

Everything is free. The festival will be held rain or shine. It is planned for outdoors but will be moved inside if the weather is poor.

"It's a fun fall activity," Martz said. It's just a fun, fun day just to be with the community. Easy family fun."

There will be hot dogs, snacks donated by Herr's, coffee, hot chocolate, apple cider, and popcorn.

There will be a bounce house and barrel train rides. "We will have folks from the congregation at each station for the children," said Martz, who is the co-chair of the church's children's ministry. "We will have more than 30 volunteers that help us."

There will also be a variety of games for kids, including pumpkin ring toss, sack races, autumn bingo, pumpkin bean bag, apple toss, football toss, basket toss, goldfish ping pong, and pumpkin golf. "We will have a prize table," Martz said. "When children come into the event, they get a stamp card with all the games listed. When they go to the game, they get a stamp. They don't have to have this all stamped. They can have no stamps, they can have one stamp, whatever. They turn this in at our prize table, and they receive a treat bag filled with candy and get to pick a prize."

Cherry Crest Adventure Farm is donating pumpkins that kids will be able to decorate with stickers and markers.

"We will have all kinds of crafts for the kids to do, like scratch art and painting, different fall crafts that they can take home," said Martz.

Visitors are invited to bring a nonperishable food item to support the church's food pantry.

"The food will be up in the pavilion," Short said. "The games are all throughout the yard and the upper parking lot. It's just so much fun. Everybody at church looks forward to it because they have so much fun. It's just such a fun day, and it's so neat to see the grounds just filled with people."

Lampeter UMC congregants relish the opportunity to welcome their neighbors. "I feel like our church is big on community outreach," said Short. "We love going into the community. We love holding events, especially free events that people can come out to. We just like to be a place for everybody."

Short enjoys planning events alongside her mother. "We joined children's ministry because my son was one of the kids (participating)," Short said. "Now he's in middle school, and I wanted to be more involved with children's ministry. I said, 'Grammy, can you hop on too?' And then my favorite season is fall, so I thought we had to have some sort of like fall event, and that's how it started. And it's just gotten bigger and bigger with more attendees."