Each year the Abbotsford Food Bank and Christmas Bureau lets you, our valuable supporters, know what our needs are financially. This year we need to raise $850,000 by year’s end to keep helping people in need in Abbotsford. A very helpful envelope should be arriving to your door this week.  We want everyone to know about the good work that is happening in our community through the Abbotsford Food Bank & Christmas Bureau.

Let us introduce you to Laurel

Laurel Healy has been helping people her whole life. Whichever community she found herself in she always got involved – helping with local Food Banks and prepping Christmas hampers each year. Though she has never been ‘well-off’ she firmly maintains that “there are so many people who are so worse off than I am”, and she tries to do what she can to help. So when her son-in-law suffered from some health issues, and her daughter had to go away for work, she didn’t hesitate to take in her three grandsons to help raise them. From this place of always helping others, it was a humbling and strange reverse to find herself needing help. Laurel first became connected with the Abbotsford Food Bank because of our Free Dental Clinic; on her limited income she was unable to afford the dental work she needed. When Christmas rolled around she found herself battling her pride in her desire to provide Christmas for her grandsons. It was a scenario that Laurel says is all too familiar for a lot of seniors – debating whether to get themselves a necessity, such as groceries or prescriptions, or to buy a little something for their grandkids; they cannot afford both. She was hesitant to ask for help, but not wanting to deny her grandsons the hope & joy of a Christmas morning, she was encouraged to sign up for the Christmas Bureau. They were sponsored out and were delighted to receive a full Christmas dinner with presents – a blessing which would have been otherwise impossible for a senior on a fixed income raising three teenage boys Laurel’s experience with the Dental Clinic and the Abbotsford Christmas Bureau has left her constantly amazed at the kindness of people.

In Laurel’s story, you hear about our Dental Program, which helped over 200 people in 2015.  We also hear about the Christmas Bureau, which helped almost 1,000 children in 2014 and is expected to help even more this year. We are so thankful to be able to provide these services and have stories like Laurel’s. Will you enter the story and donate today? Together we will impact over 3,000 people in Abbotsford all year long.

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