Church holds dance for special needs adults

The United Methodist Church in Washington hosted a dinner and dance for mentally challenged adults Friday night. The church?s junior high and high school youth groups put on the event. Methodist Church minister Jim Stiles said he would like to turn the dinner and dance into a yearly tradition.

The church served the guests chicken, rice, green beans, salad, brownies and sherbet.

Ron Canny said the food was ?awesome.? Canny said the group doesn?t get together very often, perhaps two or three times per year.

?The last time we were together was for our Christmas party at WCDC,? he said. ?We had karaoke. We had a really good time.?

Friday?s dinner had a Valentine?s Day theme. Canny said Valentine?s Day is a special time for him and his girlfriend, Amber Bowen, whom he has been dating for five months. He said they were both looking forward to the dance. Amber said her favorite dance was the ?chicken dance? and said she hoped to get the chance to perform it that evening.

Canny said his favorite dance, and also his favorite song, is the ?electric slide.?

Todd Franzen said he enjoys dancing but that it?s hard when he?s around others. He said it had been a long time since he had gotten together with a bunch of his friends. He said he was also looking forward to doing the chicken dance. He said he likes to listen to the rapper Eminem and hoped the church would play an Eminem song he could dance to.

Genie Davis, who works with mentally challenged adults, said the group of adults had been looking forward to the dance for a long time.

?It is all we ever hear,? she said. ?The girls say, ?Oh, I?ve got to get a dress.? It?s very cute.?

Stiles got the idea to do something for mentally challenged people in town when he was reading through the book of Mark in the Bible.

?Jesus reaches out to people, such as healing the lame and the deaf,? he said. ?Jesus believed that everybody was special.?

Stiles previously preached at a church in Mason City and said he interacted with mentally challenged adults there. He wanted to continue that outreach when he came to Washington last summer. He met with Davis and asked her what the mentally challenged adults would like to do.

?I said, ?How about a special Valentine?s Day event?? because we want them to know they are all special,? Stiles said.

Stiles said that he has gotten to know several of the special-needs adults because they attend the Methodist Church and a few of them work there, too.

?I learned that special-needs people liked dancing when I was in Mason City, so that?s why we put on this dance,? he said.

Stiles teaches the confirmation class to sixth- through eighth-graders. Ann Williams teaches the high school youth group and it participated, too. The youth groups served the meal and cleaned up afterward.

?I think the high school class, because they?re older, knew some of the special needs people from school,? he said.

Stiles often sees special-needs adults at sporting events, and in the past month he made sure to encourage them to attend the dance. He said he was pleased with the turnout, which was about 90 people.

Not only does Stiles want to hold an annual dance for special-needs people, he also wants to hold a carnival for them in the summer.

?We would like to work with Genie to have a carnival in Central Park,? he said.