Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the
one you trust. Tyler Vacklaw's with us here today and Tyler, it's that
time of the year. It is it is. We're glad to be here
today. Tom, appreciate you allowing us on. We're here today to talk
about the Festival of the Nativity as we are. With the Christmas season now
officially kicked off, everybody's got their bellies full of turkey and joined the Thanksgiving
holiday, now we turn our attention to the best part of the year.
Indeed, no Play It For Burke Foundation is a big part of this.
Yes, so for those that aren't familiar to Play for Burke Foundation is a
local foundation created ten nine years ago, I believe unfortunately a young lad lost
his life tragically, but his parents created a foundation is memory to help support
local children and activities, and so the Play for Birk Foundation has partnered with
the Festival the Nativity to basically the foundation's part is to go and raise money
and that money is to buy Christmas presents for kids in the community who otherwise
aren't going to have a Christmas that most of us take for granted. We
work with the local school district, with counselors and teachers to identify kids that
sadly aren't going to get a Christmas this year, and unfortunately there are a
lot of them. We work with a couple of different organizations as well that
work around youth in some areas that help us identify these kids. And then
with that money one hundred percent of the money that we raise, we go
out and volunteers go out and buy the presence. I have to say,
you know, we use the word presence. We get leeds Christmas list from
these children and it's anything but presence. I mean a lot of it is
new socks, needs, you know, clothing and things that we go out
and we buy frequently and in bulk. These kids are basically wanting the bare
minimum of what we I think take for granted unfortunately, But we work with
some of the principles as well. I know mister Brown at Jane Phillips,
he actually has a program where they go out and identify a specific thing.
So we bought a number of sleeping bags or blankets and pillows and previous years
coats and such, and so this year We are actually working with Saint John's
School on a coat drive as well, which we'll be doing Saturday at Saint
John Elementary or Saint John's School pardon me, Father John. It's not just
an elementary school. But anyway, So the foundation, that's part of our
focus is finding needs that children in the Bartlesville area have. The foundation also
does a golf tournament in April, which we focus on special needs kids.
So Kyle Poole from Tri County Tech, he leads that up and does a
phenomenal job. And I mean, here we are in December, and I
just got an email this morning talking about some things that some special needs programs
in our district are needing. And so we've got, you know, our
orders going out for that right now to buy them some supplies, materials,
equipment, and you know, we're spending tens of thousands of dollars a year
unfortunately, because funds are limited in our school districts, and so it's our
opportunity to help out. So the play for Burke Foundation is a five oh
one C three, so donations are tax deductible, and so we go out
there and people can go to the website which is www dot play for Burke.
That's p l A Y f O r b U r K. There
is no e in this name of Burke, but Playfoburke dot org. So
www dot Playfburke dot org. You can look at all the things that the
foundation does. It does talk about the Nativity and you can actually donate there
via electronic terminals and such so, but today we have the Nativity Festival.
That's a beautiful, beautiful setup it is. We are blessed with volunteers throughout
the community. And to give you just kind of an overview, this is
the thirteenth year we've done this. It's our seventh year at Saint John's School.
So they seven years ago they actually converted what was a gymnasium into a
cultural hall of sorts, a multifunctional room, which is gorgeous in and of
itself. But Father Pratt at the time and I'm not a Catholic, but
we work with the Catholic because they have a great facility. But our organization
we set this room up. I just had a conversation yesterday with an individual
trying to describe what Father Lynch Hall looks like. When we're done with it.
We have over five hundred nativities that are donated by local and non local
people alike, all revolving around the Nativity, and we transfer this building into
a Nativity wonderland. It's not just nativities, but it's the decorating, the
lighting, and everything that goes around it. We have a local family that
actually takes a hallway. They have a setup that resembles what would have been
a passageway in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. They just have a lot of
natural artifacts and decorations, so you look like you're going through a bizarre that
there's clay pots, there's different materials and different benches, all very natural to
the time they had it set up with backgrounds. I can't paint this picture
well enough, and that's why we're on radio. Have to go see see
it for ourselves exactly. But so we have all this to kind of help
draw the focus to what this is, which is the birth of Jesus Christ,
our Savior, and for the two point six billion Christians throughout the world,
this time of the year is what we all focus on and the importance
of his birth and function in this world. And so with that, the
Foundation, in partnership with the Saint John's School. We have our local individuals,
some who have dozens, if not hundreds of nativities. Some of them
have an addiction which we are happy to support. Oh cool, They're crazy
awesome. But then we have people from different churches that are all coming in
and they're saying, how do I participate in this? And it's very simply
till now till Thursday evening. So tomorrow evening, if you come by Saint
John's School with the Nativity and say I'd like to share this with the rest
of the community, we'll take that in. We'll display it with your name
on it. We want to identify those that are participating in this, and
then we will set it out there for the community and all of northeast Oklahoma
and southeast Kansas to come and participate in. You that easy, It's that
easy. And so starting Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the days that we're
open for the display. Friday, Saturday and Sunday nine am. Friday and
Saturday, I'm sorry nine am too, I believe nine pm, and then
Sunday is nine am to five pm. We got to cut it off a
little bit earlier so we can tear down and get back to our own lives
as it were. But we've spent this whole week getting the father Lynch Hall
decorated and prepared for everyone to come in and experience what Christmas is all about.
Wow, this is a very spectacular way to do it. And it's
also something that when folks are kind of in the height of the Christmas frenzy,
it's a great way to just relax and enjoy taking the sites and calm
your nerves and find some other forms of peace, knowing that you know here
exactly. I mean, that's that's the whole point. But when we started
this thirteen years ago, it was just an idea to sit there and say
we're tired of the commercialism of Christmas, you know, we want to bring
this back to what this holiday really is. And so I have to give
the biggest shouts out to Lori Alert, my wife Amanda, and the countless
other individuals that are part of this. They spend hours upon hours of time
getting this ready, facilitating it, decorating it, unloading the boxes of materials
to make this what it is. But the whole idea is to come in
and whether you spend five minutes or over an hour, which some will do
because, like I said, five hundred nativity sets and they represent six of
the continents in over thirty countries, all focused on the birth of Jesus Christ.
You could get lost in this because there's so much to see and so
much to experience. And that's what we want is people to get lost in
the birth of Christ. And the setting is awesome and once again, thirteen
years you kind of know what's going on, and everyone who's not been there
before this is really going to be well worth your time. Carve out sometime
where you can just relax, you know, to be in a hurry,
to be in a rush, really just take it all in and really that's
what it's about. That's what it is. I mean, we have cookies
and drinks available as well to participate in it, you know, just to
kind of help bring the kids. We have a few games for especially small
kids, because these are very delicate nativities. We have a great crew that
kind of manages everybody as they come in to kind of give them things to
do, especially for the kids. But we want families to come in,
we want individuals to come It doesn't whether you're a Christian or not. We
want you to come in because this is for everybody. This is not just
for Christians. This Christ came into the world for all mankind. So our
focus is to bring this out to as many people as want to attend.
So I do want to say, if you're not familiar with Bartlesville, this
is Keeler and gosh, I'm gonna catch myself now Third Street, I believe
right behind the Hotel Phillips, right next to Saint John Catholic School or church
is the school. And so I'm sorry it's Johnstone, not Keeler. I
too many streets downtown I work and play on so, but right behind the
hotel specifically you'll see it. We have the star that will be lit up
for everybody to see. You can go to the website, like I said,
play for Burke dot org and you can, or you can email Clint
at Playfoburke dot org and we'll get some communications out if if you're really striving
to get help to find the place. Actually you can ask anybody, and
I'm sure anybody can point you in the right direction. I've eaten many a
pancake at Father Lynch Hall. Yeah, but it is it is. I
mean it is really something We will also, as I said this is we're
raising money for children in the community. How do we go about doing that
during Nativity? So we will have an area in the in the hall set
up for the foundation. We actually raffle off some nativities as well to give
out nice So we spend the year look at we've become addicts ourselves to go
out. When we see nativities at Branson or wherever we are traveling, we
go, oh, is this something that we may want to raffle off for
somebody else? Because people come in and they I mean they really are sitting
there going where did you get this? How do I get one of these?
Or the best part is oh, I've got this myself or I've got
one like it. And we'll spend more most of the three days telling people
next year, hey, why don't you participate? If you've got something that
you're proud of, bring it. Melanie Bayliss, who runs our sponsorships and
our donations, she will put you in contact with everything you need to know.
She has a distribution list to reach out to people to remind them this
is coming up year on year, so it is something that every year it
grows a little bit more, and we just we had a lady yesterday,
a local artist that made her own nativity that we've already set up for display.
She was like, I've never heard of this. And that's the heartbreaker
for us, is you know that there are people in Bartlesville that still aren't
familiar with the festival, and that's why we're here to promote it. We
don't get anything out of this other than smiles on faces, and hopefully,
like I said, what I take very dear to my heart is the fact
that there are kids that are out there that are going to wake up Christmas
morning like it's any other day. And that's something that when we're opening,
I still got children at home when they're tearing through the presence. You know,
sometimes we take for granted how blessed we are to live in a community
like Bartlesville, But with that, there are countless kids that are sitting there
going I know what everybody else is doing this morning. I'm waking up and
not getting anything. We're trying to take some of that off off the streets,
if you will. We want kids to experience the joy of a gift,
because again, Christmas isn't about the presents. It's about the present that
Christ gave us, coming into the world, dying for our sins and giving
us eternal life. So that's what we emulate when we give gifts to one
another, is representing that gift that God gave us and his son. But
these kids, they need to know that they're loved and they are loved.
I hope that doesn't come across parents and guardians do everything they can, sure,
but we are a blessed community that we give out to those that aren't
as fortunate. And this is an opportunity for us. If we're listening and
you feel like you want to help out, one hundred percent of the money
that we raise in this scenario gets spent before December twenty fourth, and it
goes specifically to five different school school systems here in Bartlesville school sites and two
different organizations that identify children who aren't going to get what we take for granted.
Thank you very much for coming in. Yeah, thanks for sharing.
I know sometimes you know I'm sitting here getting all choked up, and I
know you are too, but this is really gonna be great. So this
weekend, and it is the thirteenth annual festival of the Nativity Father, Lynch
Hall Friday, Saturday, Sunday nine to nine, every night except Sunday nine
to five, but no cost, free admission. Come in. It's gonna
be cold, so come in. It's gonna be nice and warm, warm
your body, warm your heart. Very good. Thank you, Tyter,
thank you Tom. Appreciate it. Alright, folks, you've been listening to our