Photo courtesy of the Clear Creek Heritage Association.

An old church in rural Iowa can be ignored in current times, but a few local citizens decided they wanted to bring people both near and far together and give back to their community with an annual event.

The 3rd Annual Cook Off Contest at the Saints Peter and Paul Church in Clear Creek Township is being held this Saturday. Organizer Mick Berg talks about the event’s inception, “This was Jon Baker’s idea, and it was his idea to get more young people involved in our community project down at Clear Creek. We’re old settlers who bought the church and we’re getting older, and he’s young, he’s in his 30s. He says there’s a lot of young people that would get involved if we get a cook off contest. And so we started this three years ago, and I thought it was a great idea.”

It doesn’t only serve as community event, as Berg explains, “We’d like to be the primary charity in Keokuk County. At present we give out about $2,000 a year, but we also have a lot of work to do with our structure and so we’re working on that too. Our idea is, whenever there’s a cancer victim we like to give them gift cards for the Mayo Clinic, and if there’s a fire we like to help them out. Wherever we can help people we try to do that.”

The cook off contest is this Saturday, with games for kids and a fireworks display at dark. The winner of each category will receive $350 and be eligible to compete at the state fair.