Soroptimist International of Abbotsford-Mission has been an active service club in our communities since 1981. 40 Years! We are a small club but a mighty group, addressing various issues and fulfilling various needs in our community.

Many programs over the years have had the Soroptimist touch. Here is a photo of Rose Jenkins demonstrating the newly implemented "SEND HELP" sign for your vehicle. A donation to the Abbotsford Breast Cancer Clinic is another example. We have never maintained records of our volunteer hours and donations prior to June 2019. That's how we can now say we invested $52,390 in the Abbotsford-Mission communities.

Our club also raises funds and invests those back in our community. Our Live Your Dream Awards have totaled $39,500 in cash awards to 12 deserving women from Abbotsford-Mission area. These women have overcome significant personal adversity and are pursuing Post-Secondary educations. Dream It, Be It: Career Support for Girls is an ongoing program designed to encourage and support girls to continue their education and assist them with their career choices for their future. SIAM's Closet is a free shopping experience for new and gently used household items to assist women setting up their home after their recovery from domestic violence, substance abuse or leaving the social care system. Glory House Edible Garden is a program to mentor women in recovery learn to grow vegetables to ​help provide food for their table. Women from Glory House Recovery plant, nurture and harvest the variety of vegetables they plant. Food is a family bond, being able to provide food is critical to everyone. Glory House visits allow club members to encourage and support the residents on their path to living clean and sober. Our visits are of a social nature proving, that life can be fun without drugs and alcohol.

COVID-19 saw a demand for hospital gowns and face masks for community organizations. Our club made gowns for MACL and facemasks for SARA for Women & Archway Community Services.

Fundraising opportunities dried up pretty quickly due to COVID, but let's just talk about what our club has done and will continue to do to meet our financial commitments. We volunteer at the Abbotsford Entertainment Centre making popcorn for many events. Our primary fundraiser for Live Your Dream Awards is our LYD Awards Luncheon and Fashion Show, a much anticipated event every April. We made contour facemasks in response to the demand for personal masks. We hold all you can eat Spaghetti Dinners the 3rd Tuesday each month. Our latest fundraiser is Flamingo Flocking, so much joy sending and receiving pink flamingos - give it a try!

Soroptimists are active in Abbotsford-Mission and always looking for opportunities to assist in the community. We strive to improve the lives of women and girls and we are doing that one step at a time. If you are interested in our club contact us, we'd like to meet you. Join us at our monthly meetings and social gatherings.

This Mission Spotlight brought to you by:

When I think of Horror, I think of Stephen King's Carrie. This is NOT that. If I could make up my own genre, I would call it Psychologically Chilling. I LOVE psychologically chilling! But I'm not into freaked out, scared to be alone, terror. Okay? Just so we're clear. This is not that. 

It is, however, both a mystery and a story of family love. It is strange, sinister, foreboding, and a bit twisted. 
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My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

And so begins the first chapter and our introduction to the Blackwood family, or what's left of them. 
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Six years ago, most of the family died after a family dinner because of arsenic in the sugar bowl. Who killed them? We have to read on, as Merricat's (Mary Katherine's nickname) deceptively childish voice fills us in on the details of their existence, including Constance's crippling agoraphobia and obsession with cooking, Uncle Julian's endless and senile loop of trying to figure out who committed the murders, and Merricat's hate and distrust of the gossiping villagers and any other outsiders. 

Merricat is now eighteen, but through the narration of the story it is obvious that she is stuck in a younger mind, perhaps a mind from six years ago. 

This remaining Blackwoods survive together, shut off from the outside world with only Merricat going to get groceries and library books. They are... happy? At least they've adapted to living under constant suspicion. But then... 

Change comes in the form of a distant gold-digging cousin, Charles, who is set on marrying Constance and inheriting the family money. His intrusion into their lives creates a rising panic in Merricat, as the carefully protected life she leads in her disturbingly structured world is threatened. 
This is a story about family relationships, oppression, jealousy and the decent into madness and isolation when things don't go as planned. If you enjoy excellent writing and darker psychological themes, it will fascinate you until the very end. 

Read on a dark night with a mug of tea to warm you. Maybe skip the sugar.

We Have Always Lived In the Castle is on the shelves now at Totally Book-ish.