Leavenworth Young Life fundraiser features former Seahawk Clint Gresham

Leavenworth Young Life is pulling out all the stops for their upcoming dessert fundraiser at the Festhalle. The featured speaker this year is former Seahawk long snapper Clint Gresham, who was part of the Seahawk Super Bowl team.
“We do a banquet every year to raise money for our operations, camp and all. This is the first time we’ve done something with a guest speaker of this caliber. We’re reaching out to sports fans as well as Young Life supporters,” said Leavenworth Young Life Committee member Karen Brown.
“We’ve had a Young Life speaker, somebody within the organization or something like that. Clint is double duty. He is a Seahawks Super Bowl Young Life leader. He’s Young Life leader from Mercer Island. He’s able to blend those two things. Now, he lives in Texas,” Brown said.
Former Leavenworth Young Life Community Chair Jordan Brown said Clint has been pretty public with his faith and Young Life during the time he was with the Seahawks. In fact, he was a Mercer Island Young Life leader during that time.
“We would see blips of that on the radar with some of the Young Life stuff that would come out. He wrote a book about his experiences being a Seahawk ... what it was like to live a life of faith in that environment. Then, all of sudden, getting a call from Pete, saying we’re going to save $100,000. How did that all work in his life?,” Jordan Brown said.
Gresham wrote a book and started putting things on Facebook and Twitter indicating he was going to do some banquet speaking. Brown said they went after him a couple years ago, but he was way too busy.
“It was some good timing where we wanted to move to the Festhalle. We’ve been in the Enzian for the past four years, could seat about 150-200. We wanted to see if we could grow out of that, come to the Festhalle and bring in 300-500 people, so the banquet will change from a plated, seated type an event to a dessert seated event,” Jordan Brown said.
Gresham is currently on a book tour, which is why he’s making himself available to small groups, Karen Brown said. Leavenworth Young Life has bought a case of 500 books which will be available at the event.
Past fundraisers include parking cars about every weekend during festivals. They also have a booth selling brats during Christkindlmarkt. They also sell lanterns for the Christkindlemarkt parade.
“We did the strawberry sale for years after Rotary gave it to us. Basically, costs just went out of control. Production was chaos over there. They couldn’t get reliable pickers. Costs kept going up and up, so we had to let go of that one,” Jordan Brown said.
The current edition of Leavenworth Young Life has been around six years under Director TJ Ka’apuni. He said they are seeing about 20 kids per week, and probably a quarter of the high school students over the course of the year.
Ka’apuni said Young Life introduces kids to Christ and helps them grow in their faith. Young Life believes in the five C’s of life, he said.
“The first ‘C’ would be club. The Young Life Club is our weekly meeting. We meet every Monday up the Chumstick at 1490 Chumstick Hwy. We are calling it the mullet, for the kid’s sake,” Ka’apuni said. “We play a bunch of games, eat a bunch of food. Then, somebody comes up and gives us a talk about Jesus. Another ‘C’ of Young Life is our committee. The committee supports the behind the scenes so we can do what we do with all the kids.”
Over the summer, Young Life typically goes to camp, which is the third “C.”
“Kids just get away and unplug and hear more about Jesus with some of the leaders. This year, Young Life is going to a camp in British Columbia called Malibu. Dates are August 2-8,” Ka’apuni said.
The fourth “C” is campaigners, which is the weekly meeting for kids. The fifth “C” is for contact work, which is showing care for kids.
The Leavenworth Young Life Dessert Benefit Fundraiser is at 6 p.m. on Sunday, March 11 at the Festhalle in Leavenworth. Ka’apuni said it’s a great way to spend some quality time with your teen.
To register for the event, go to yldessertbenefit.evenbrite.com. Gresham’s new book is Beco/ming, the loving process to wholeness. He’ll be there to sign copies.
The event is open to youth when accompanied by and registered with an adult. Just let them know how many are in your party when you register, so they can plan accordingly.
For information, contact Ka’apuni at 509-679-3247 or tj@leavenworth.younglife.org.
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.