PENNIES FOR HEAVEN: CHURCH YOUTHS COLLECT 300,000 COINS TO AID MISSIONS

By penny-wise design, a Cape Girardeau church youth group hopes its fund-raising campaign for missionaries will ascend to a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Members of the youth group at the Bethel Assembly of God Church worked from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon tirelessly placing pennies, edge-to-edge, in a design on the church's gymnasium floor. The church is at 1855 Perryville Road.

Three tiers of large block letters, made with pennies shimmering from the overhead lights, spanned the gym's basketball court Saturday, spelling out "Won by One, WAR, Speed the Light." "Speed the Light" is the annual missionary fund-raising effort Assemblies of God youth members hold across the nation each year, and "Won by One" is this year's theme, Youth Pastor Phillip Roop said. WAR an acronym for Willing, Anointed and Radical refers to the local youth group, WAR Youth Ministries.

"I didn't realize how much work it was going to be," Roop said late Saturday morning during a four-hour break in the effort. "It's a ton of work. It's constant and monotonous."

Group members raised the money with pennies under the assumption that people, in tough economic times, would be more willing to donate pennies than larger denominations of money. When finished, Roop estimated the design would be made up of about 300,000 pennies, or around $3,000 worth.

As of late Saturday morning, youth members had about 265,000 pennies laid out, he said. The largest number of pennies spelled out WAR in the middle of the court. Roop said pennies still needed to be laid out to cover the remainder of the basketball court's free-throw lanes.

The penny amount is well short of the Guinness record, which Roop said, according to the 1990 Guinness edition, still stands at 662,353 pennies. But that record, reached in Atlanta in 1985 by 100 volunteers, involved pennies laid edge-to-edge in a line, he said.

"Maybe (this) can classify as a new record." Roop said the youth group's effort, unlike the one in the record book, is more intricate. The group initially planned to beat the record by raising 670,000 pennies to fill the entire gym floor.

Once converted into larger denominations of cash, the money will go towards paying for transportation, audio and sound, and printing equipment for missionaries the world over, including those who work with American Indians and at Teen Challenge missionaries across the nation, said Roop. Money might be used to buy a horse or donkey for a missionary in the Andes in South America, he said, or a land rover-type vehicle for a missionary in a country with unpaved roads.

Forty-five to 50 youth group members helped with the local effort, Roop said, along with about 10 adults, counting himself. He said youth group members collected the pennies from relatives, neighbors and church members; at school; and with 5-gallon plastic water containers at area businesses and the church.

Youth group member Luke Nievar, 21, called the design "original."

"You find some neat pennies. I think I spent more time flipping pennies than I did placing pennies," he said. Along with the usual wheat, Canadian and other foreign pennies, youth members found two pennies with a small likeness of President John F. Kennedy etched to the right of President Abraham Lincoln.

Church pianist Nancy Stovall said she and her husband, Jack, helped the group lay out the pennies until about 3 a.m. Saturday. They hadn't planned to help out; all they planned to do, she said, was stop by and check in on the youth members.

"(Jack) said, `Here hold my coat,' and he got down on the floor and started placing pennies. So I started doing the same thing. Once you get started, it's hard to quit."

Shelly Little, a church member, stopped by the church Saturday morning to see the design. Out among the pennies, either already laid out or still in several $25 cardboard packages, was $31 she donated with help from her father, mother, aunt and fiance.

"I didn't know what to expect," she said of the design. "It's very unique and off-the wall."

Youth group member Crystal Randen, 13, acknowledged the effort was fun. But she added, "I never want to see a penny again in my life."