RICHMOND, July 2 - Commissioners always say it's very hard to put the General Assembly experience into words.

But the Committee on Local Arrangements has found that it's not so tough to put it into numbers.

GA opening worship, by the numbers:

16,000 Communion wafers

300 Communion sets

330 Communion servers

280 ushers

425 choir members

20 musicians

2,109 volunteers

8,000 worshippers, including 87 ecumenical delegates

$42,000 put in the collection baskets

For the week:

4: hours it took to sell 200 extra Peruvian manta tote bags

3,000: number of bags distributed

28,000: hours COLA volunteers devoted to making sure the Assembly ran smoothly

55: doors the COLA volunteers opened for commissioners all day every day

45: liturgists required for special services

161: exhibitors

83: mantas used as Assembly decorations

800: fans painted by the youth of the Presbytery of the James

1,683: Number of books collected by the Special Gift Project for a library of a presbytery in Accra, Ghana

$4,058: Money collected for the Ghana library

Represented at the Assembly:

113 congregations

2 new-church developments

2 fellowship groups

10 African-American congregations

2 Korean congregations

1 Arabic-language fellowship