MANCHESTER — Organizers for Manchester Christian Church's ONE Day of Community were a little off on their crowd expectations.

Despite Saturday's sweltering temperatures, attendance at Sheridan-Emmett Park easily topped the 3,000 people the congregation expected would attend the event, which was a combination of a children's fair and a chance for adults to pick up various supplies the congregation gathered for those in need.

“We were blown away by how many people showed up today,” said Lisa Mazur, who was in charge of a group of about 10 parishioners who organized the festivities and supply line. “This event was dual focused — to provide needed school supplies and personal care items and for our city just to have fun together.”

For the kids, the day was about bounce houses, face painting, hot dogs and cotton candy. For parents, there were boxes filled with various school supplies like rulers, pencils, pens and notebooks. Other boxes included every-day items like shampoo, razors, toothpaste and even socks. And for parents with babies, there were diapers, baby powder, ointment and wipes available to fill the large yellow bags.

“We didn't want to make it what worked best for us. We wanted it to be at the end of the day what they needed,” Mazur said. “We wanted to make sure that we gave them choices.”

Parishioners picked up the yellow bags, donated by the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, at the church over the last few weeks and returned them full of items from four different lists — children, men, women and babies.

Mazur and her team emptied the bags at the church and itemized everything into boxes, which were placed in a long line Saturday for people to choose as they needed.

“It was like a personal shopping experience. That's what we wanted it to be,” Mazur said.

The church and Fisher Cats plan to fill another 3,000 bags to be distributed at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium on Aug. 22, a Wednesday when the baseball team is on the road.

Other groups and service organizations set up tents in the park across the street from Beech Street School for Saturday's event, which started at 10 a.m. and was still going strong at the scheduled closing time of 2 p.m.

The field had various carnival-style games, as well as five inflatable stations where children could bounce and slide all they wanted. The 90-plus degree weather didn't seem to slow them down a bit.

Bandana Adhikari, Benisha Khanal and Pravin Khanal had a difficult time deciding what the best part of the day was until the 10-year-old cousins from Nepal agreed on the obstacle course bounce house. The girls had butterflies painted on their face while 7-year-old Prashant Khanal went with a Spiderman look.

“This was soooo fun!” Bandana said.

Pravin raved about the cotton candy, then added there was one downside to the day of fun.

“When I went on the trampoline, it said 'no flips,'” he said, making his disappointment quite clear.

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Doug Alden may be reached at dalden@unionleader.com.