By Rosalind Thackery, Children's Ministry Correspondent

UPPER DALWICK — In the spring of 1993, a volunteer at Hazel Grove Bible Chapel filled out an order form for craft sticks for that summer's Vacation Bible School. She meant to order 1,100. The box that arrived on the loading dock, according to the packing slip still taped inside the supply closet door, held 11,000.

Thirty-three summers later, the church is still using them.

"Every VBS, every Sunday school class, every rainy-day craft for the last three decades has been built on those sticks," said children's director Nadine Coulterby, 54, standing in front of a closet shelf that bows noticeably in the middle. "We have made picture frames, crosses, birdhouses, bookmarks, a scale model of the fellowship hall and one raft that a fourth grader insists would float. And we are not even halfway through the box."

That was the finding of a formal count conducted in September by the Board of Trustees, which had grown concerned about the shelf. Volunteers counted 6,212 sticks remaining, a number that drew a long silence at the October trustees meeting, followed by the formation of a subcommittee.

The subcommittee returned two weeks later with a five-year plan. Under the proposal, every craft at Hazel Grove through 2031 must use a minimum of 40 sticks. Bulletin covers will feature at least one stick, glued on by hand. The Christmas pageant will build its stable entirely out of them, along with "as many shepherds' crooks as the shepherds can carry."

"We looked at simply donating them," said trustee chair Elwood Baskerfield, 69. "But the box has been here longer than the carpet. Some of our members were VBS kids who made a popsicle stick cross in 1993, and now they're bringing their own kids to make one out of the same box. You can't put a price on that. Also, we tried, and nobody would take them."

The volunteer who placed the original order, Marjorie Fenstead, now 81, has been at peace with the mistake for years. She still teaches the second grade class on Sunday mornings and keeps a small framed stick on her classroom wall with a label reading "Exhibit A."

"I was off by one zero," Fenstead said. "The Lord has been very patient with me, and so has the closet."

The plan has met some resistance. The youth group objected to a proposed popsicle stick bake sale sign, arguing that it "takes 900 sticks to spell 'brownies.'" The worship team pushed back on a request to decorate the music stands. And the grounds committee has formally asked that nobody build another birdhouse until someone figures out what to do with the 214 already sitting in the church attic.

Coulterby said she remains hopeful. "If every family takes home two crafts a week, we finish in the summer of 2031," she said. "Then we can finally order new ones."

At press time, the trustees had appointed a volunteer to fill out the new order form, and assigned a second volunteer to stand behind her and count the zeros.