By: Jasmine B., Lancaster Assembly

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since the last Pot of Gold Story, and I know that each assembly in California Rainbow is working their hardest to gain members and do fundraisers, and I’m very proud of everyone for pushing through!

Lancaster has been up to a lot since the last time we’ve written for the Pot of Gold. We’ve held plenty of planning meetings, and have held membership parties as well! We’ve done a Crown of Service Project, put together by our member Abigail V., in which she challenged the Community Queens and our assembly’s members to donate gift care packages to the local Department of Children and Family Services ( DCFS). The donations collected made high numbers of over 700 items donated to the foster children in DCFS. We then held an after-party where we did a Disney© trivia Game over Zoom© to celebrate everyone’s hard work.

Later on that month, we held a summer Pictionary© and used some of the tools on the Zoom© meetings to draw our pictures! Currently, we’re planning to hold more membership events and fundraisers, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone’s spooky and cute costumes at the IORG Halloween party! In fact, we’re looking forward to seeing everyone’s smiling faces at all of our Rainbow events!

I know that you can go to any Rainbow member for anything you need. We’re not only friends, we’re sisters. And as sisters, we’re here for each other. Don’t let anything break your heart.

By: Audrey M, Member of the State Public Relations Team, Lemon Grove Assembly

Greetings from the 2020-2021 California Public Relations Team! We are focused on promoting California Rainbow to the world. Our goals include helping the assemblies with their self promotion and promoting Rainbow on the national scale. We have many things in the works to help promote CA Rainbow.

We are so proud of everything California Rainbow has accomplished during this global pandemic. Together, we have made more than 12,000 masks! All of us here at the PR Team are so proud to see all of the work that our jurisdiction has done over these last couple of months.

We are excited to see everything that our state has planned for the future. We welcome our new 15 members, initiated at our very first virtual initiation, back in August, and are eager to see what they will do on their Rainbow journey. We are very proud of our blog team, which has started a blog by girls, for girls. We are currently seeking Rainbow alumni willing to talk about their experience for our Alumni Spotlight feature.

We cannot wait to share our passion with all of California Rainbow, and the world. Until we meet again!

By: Kenna W., Natoma Assembly

Hey California Rainbow!!! This is Kenna from Natoma Assembly reporting live about the fun things Natoma has been doing over this wacky summer. Although we have been entirely virtual, our girls have found exciting new ways to give back to our community. We have made amazing blankets for Shriners Hospitals for Children, we did a baby food and supplies drive for the South Crisis Nursery, and our line officers put together some super fun service bags, which included four service projects that we could do safely from home! These projects included: tie blankets, senior home pen pals, “heartbeats” for first responders, and knit hats for new babies in the NICU. We did some of these projects via Zoom©, and Golden Arch, Lemon Grove, and Visalia Assembly joined us on one of our calls to make baby hats. In addition to giving back to our community, the girls of Natoma found some fun ways to have fun during Zoom© calls. From playing games with other assemblies, to having engaging activities after each meeting, our girls sure have shown that we can still stay connected over a computer screen!!! And to top off our summer, we had a new girl initiated at California Rainbow’s very first virtual initiation. This term sure has been a wild ride but we can’t wait to see what our next term has in store for our girls!!! See you on the other side of the Rainbow for my next report!!! Kenna Out!!

By: Shawna B., Foothills of Heaven Assembly

Foothills of Heaven Assembly has had a quiet summer, with COVID-19. We have been trying to attend different Zoom© activities and have had a great time planning and executing our Virtual OV. Our Luau was amazing and everyone had such a blast working on it and meeting with Isabella. We can’t wait to do more stuff in person when it is safe, but until then, we are reaching out to each other and to the girls in our area to stay connected.

By: Audrey M., Lemon Grove Assembly

Welcome to Lemon Grove University! My name is Audrey M., and I will be your student leader for today. We here at LGU are excited to welcome you all. It is my privilege to tell you about what has been going on at LGU this past semester. We have been using California’s stay-at-home order to benefit our communities. We have been making masks for our communities and donating them to businesses and people in our community. Over the summer, we also made hats for babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at one of our local hospitals.

We college women like to have fun, as well as help our community. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go pick strawberries in Carlsbad in early June. Of course, we followed County and State mandates! Our adult advisors also did a drive-by parade to celebrate the students of LGU. We were also excited to welcome students from within our state and from other states to our camping-themed OV in August.

LGU is very proud of our two recent graduates, Audrey M. and Rosemarie M. Both graduated high school this summer and are attending college, with the hope of using their degrees to help their communities. They join our two Grand Officers Rebecka S. and Taylor-Ann Q.

We are so proud of California Rainbow for its commitment to keeping everyone safe by holding all events virtually. LGU looks forward to being able to hold events in person soon, but in the meantime, we would love to see you at our virtual events. Here at Lemon Grove University, we are grateful for our members, including two Grand Officers, who help decide our events. We cannot wait to connect with you all again in person soon. Stay safe, students!

By: The girls and adults of Helen G. McCallum Assembly

Well, as you know the summer of 2020 was no typical summer. Helen G. McCallum is used to getting together during the summer and having pool parties, picnics, working in our community, and going to Quakes games. Due to gathering restrictions, we had to find another way to get together, have fun and be involved in our community.

In June, we held a virtual movie night membership party and watched Teen Beach 2 via a watch party, thank you Ms. Buck.

During the month of July, we collected non-perishable food for the Lutheran Social Services of California local food bank. We are excited to say that on our first trip we donated 435 items. We are planning another trip at the end of August. We also decorated pillow cases that the food bank will use and give out to those coming in for assistance. The pillow cases were decorated by the girls with inspiring messages and colorful pictures. 

Following our meetings in August, we painted rocks with messages of Hope and left them around our community to help make people smile when they found them and learned how to draw an emoji from one of our future Helen G. girls, Savannah R. who did a great job. We held a virtual get together pool party. It was a lot of fun, but the water was really cold!

We have also been preparing for our Official Visit of Isabella L., Grand Worthy Advisor, and Mrs. Dana Regier, Supreme Inspector, in California of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls on September 19th, 2020. This is our first virtual OV and there is a lot to do. We have to practice and memorize our tributes and then record them so that they can be played during the OV. What a success our OV was. We all did an amazing job! Connor N. and Alysa T. delivered an awesome flag tribute and we even learned how to make leis with BrookeLynn D. following the OV.

In September, we also had our election of officers for the next term and the Official Visit of our Grand Deputy. Mrs. Lewrana Lee is our new Grand Deputy and we are really trying to surprise her. We have a lot of great ideas, but shhhhh, it is a secret!  We had her do our own virtual obstacle course and then presented her with a card and an official Mighty Helen G. shirt. Thank you, Mrs. Lee, for being such a great sport!

Following our first meeting in September, Harley O., another future Helen G. girl, taught us how to make a hobo bag out of an old tank top. It was so fun! We ended the month with a four-day online popcorn fundraiser. It was a crazy four days, but we did sell over $2,400.00 in popcorn!

All of our meetings have been virtual. This is very new to many of us, so our meetings have been open business meetings which means that anyone interested in Rainbow can join us. The great thing is that we have six girls that are our Future Helen G. Girls and they get to join our virtual meeting and even participate. After our meetings, we have been having scavenger hunts, bingo games, playing Simon Says and we have even found ways to draw and paint together. We are having fun, but sure do miss getting together. We hope to see you at one of our virtual meetings.

By: Ireland P. and Madison M., Heart of the Valley Assembly

“Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day.”  The girls of Heart of the Valley have kept very busy providing service this summer. In June, we spent time tying blankets, and making soft pillows and toys for the Shriners Hospital, and helped our local Daughters of the Nile Temple. In July, we spent over 200 hours at a fireworks booth being a show of force outside for one of our local Eastern Star Chapters. While we were there, we also painted pavers and stones to place in the Friendship Garden at Terry’s House, which was the benefactor of our Service OV.

We were pleased to perform the first Virtual OV with our sister assemblies of Visalia and Central Coast. It was fun to see how we could perform an OV even when we couldn’t be there in person. We were so happy to see so many visitors and Grand Officers online with us that day.

In August, we were pleased to have three members join our assembly at the first statewide virtual Initiation. Welcome to Kiana, Faith, and Emma! We are so glad to have new sisters. We also have two other girls waiting to join us, with one of them being a sister joining us after moving from Washington Rainbow. Gracie and Lacie, we also cannot wait to have you join us!

In September, we began to tie dye masks to give to those who may need new ones. We worked with FEMA who gave various non-profits masks to give out in their communities. We received 1000 masks and we are working to make them colorful. Our goal is to give them to Terry’s House, our local mission, and women’s shelters. This project will continue into October as girls get their friends and families to help them die these at home. We will also use this as a venue for membership.

We have been meeting virtually through Zoom© and trying to get in contact with each other frequently. Our goal is to keep our assembly thriving through our inability to meet in person. On September 26th, we attended our district’s youth protection training at our rea leadership training, another first for us and the state. The breakout room chats allowed the girls to express themselves and talk about bullying and how they can protect themselves while online. Afterwards, a few brave souls stayed on to make slime together. It was fun to see how creative all the girls were with making their own slime to play with.

We are anxiously awaiting the time when we can meet with each other in person. Until that time, watch out that you don’t get flocked by our flamingos and other birds! We are going to be starting this project to assist our WA, Haleigh, in her service project for Wildlife Rehabilitation. We will leave behind a bird house and some seeds for them to also help us feed the birds through the fall and early winter.

Small acts of service can cause ripples throughout your communities. BE creative and don’t hesitate to help. Keep looking for those golden opportunities of service that we can perform at home as individuals but collectively make a huge difference.

By: Mackenzie A., Chula Vista Assembly

Chula Vista Assembly recently decided to get to know each other a little better and have a secret sister basket making fun project. The active girls in our Assembly, along with some of the adult advisory board members held a gift exchange on camera at our last meeting. It was a lot of fun learning a little more about each other and getting a little treat. Small gift baskets were also dropped off to our members that have not been active recently to let them know we have been thinking of them. The girls and adults are also very excited that we will be welcoming two new members into the assembly soon. Their applications have been read and they have been participating in our business meetings. We have had a game night which was a lot of fun. The girls were also so surprised when the Advisory Board drove by each girls’ house and gave them a goodie bag to let them know we were thinking of them. For Grandparent’s Day, we sold flowers that were delivered by our acting Worthy Advisor and one of our board members. We hope to have even more continued fun in the upcoming months.

By: Macey L., Camellia Assembly

Every year, our assembly makes thousands of dollars through our 4th of July fireworks booth. The booth was open for seven days. This money helps with giving to the Grand Service Project, sending girls to Grand Assembly, fun trips, and our overall operating budget for the year. Due to Covid-19, this year the girls could not work at the booth sales. Our adults put in countless hours, working the booth from 8 am-9 pm, to make sure it was still a success. This year, we made more than ever, as so many people stayed home for firework festivities. A big shout out to the Advisory Board, parents/grandparents, and majority members of Camellia Assembly!  The girls couldn’t have done it without you!

By: Ariel P., San Jose Assembly

What has San Jose Assembly been up to? Well, let me tell you! We installed Kaitlyn B. as our Worthy Advisor in January. Her installation was unicorn and rainbow-themed. Unfortunately, we also had a loss of our own Mrs. Amanda Robles in 2019. The girls from District 33 performed a memorial ceremony for her to honor her. In March, we had our last in-person fundraising dinner of yummy corned beef and cabbage. 

Not long after the horrible COVID-19 hit and EVERYTHING changed, we had to start thinking outside of the box. We held our girls at their current stations and reinstalled Kaitlyn as Worthy Advisor in May, this time with a Dumbo theme. We began hosting virtual meetings so that we can keep moving forward. We had to wait to see if COVID would pass, so we could attend Grand Assembly in person; but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen, so we had a virtual Grand Assembly, and we had some of our Rainbow sisters participate in Bow Team Ritual Competition. We also attended Supreme Assembly in July the same way. 

During COVID, we got really busy trying to find ways to have fundraisers and membership parties. Our Faith, Sarmyshta V, hosted our first virtual membership party. Destinee T., our Charity, held a to-go spaghetti dinner to raise funds for The Painted Turtle, this year’s Grand Service Project, and collected donations for care packages to send to our troops. In June, we made masks to donate to the Edward Boss Prado Foundation. Emily M. held a virtual back-to-school stretch party in August, and we had Kahoots© and a Disney© trivia party as well. We also had a virtual beach trip; virtually, we got to go explore Anguilla. A lot of fun was had and we did it all safely distanced, yet connected!

We had a virtual OV this summer, themed after the Twilight Zone©. It was a great success! On August 8th, Mrs. Regier was announced as Supreme Inspector and Member of the House of Gold. Yay Mrs. Regier, what an accomplishment! We also welcomed two new members in the summer of 2020 of Joanie Jacka’s initiation class. Welcome Tabitha P. and Meah S.! 

We also had a very successful bake sale, to help our hope Aurora P. raise funds for the assembly. Finally, we installed our new Worthy Advisor, Melody S., in September, with a Disney© theme “If you can dream it, you can do it”. We look forward optimistically and can’t wait to see what the next term accomplishes! We hope everyone stays healthy!