Our 2026 Shrine Fair was an enormous success thanks to the tremendous help of so many hard-working, caring, and generous people who provided more support that we could have ever imagined. We humbly thank you all. We apologize for not naming everyone who diligently worked so hard to accomplish the Fair’s success, but there were so many dedicated and devoted volunteers that we may unknowingly omit some names. Our volunteers worked countless hours before, during and after the Fair. They worked in hot weather and sometimes on rainy nights collecting, sorting and pricing items for the fair for six weeks with much enthusiasm and no complaints.

Thank you also to the volunteer kitchen crew who cooked and cooked and cooked so many chicken cutlets, eggplant, meatballs and fried dough under some challenging circumstances (broken freezer, broken refrigerator, broken ice maker, no a/c in the hot kitchen). However, even with these trials, they did a phenomenal job and spent many, many hours in front of the hot stoves, always with smiles on their faces.

Many, many thanks also to everyone in the Shrine community and beyond who so graciously and kindly donated beautiful gift baskets, generous gift cards, lottery tickets, wine/alcohol, money donations and other magnificent gifts to use for our raffle table. As well as individuals and families, countless businesses kindly donated much needed gift cards to help increase the value of our raffle items, and we are deeply appreciative of their kindness and generosity.

All 72 of the raffle items donated amounted to over $15,000! We received many upbeat comments about our raffle gift table and also positive comments on how neat, clean and organized the Fair merchandise was displayed.

We are beyond blessed to have such a beautiful, warm and supportive Shrine Community, and we look forward to doing it again next year. The plans are already in the works! ~Wayne and Connie Pickles