Thank you to everyone who helped make our annual May Banquet such a great success! Thank you to all who attended, bought tickets and bid on the desserts and auction items. Together we raised over $15000! Thank you for partnering with us to serve our community.

Our featured speaker, Pam Stenzel, was unforgettable and impacted all who attended. For more on Pam, check out her website and this video on YouTube.

For photos of the Banquet, please click here.

One of the speakers at TLC's High Tea fundraiser held on March 2 was Dr. Laura, who is involved with the Pregnancy Centre in Huntsville, ON.

She will be one of 25 women walking from the Morgentaler Clinic in Montreal to the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa, a walk that commemorates 25 years of unrestricted abortions in Canada. The walk will take place from April 28 to May 9, 2013.

2012 was a very busy year for TLC The Life Centre. Our services were well used – our fully stocked Care Closet for moms with babies; free counselling for women in need of guidance and forgiveness; sexual integrity presentations for high school students; and support to churches and our community. To do this work, we have been involved in a number of fundraising events to keep our Centre up and running, events in which you, our valued supporters, have participated. We have recapped some of these events.

In February, we held a very special High Tea event at Bethel CRC where our guest speaker was Karen Henein. We attended the Newmarket Prayer Breakfast in March to show our support for our town and its leaders. We also presented a very successful Banquet at DiNardo’s in May, where the well-known abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen, changed the way we think about abortion and its consequences. Once again, on Canada Day, we manned our tent at Fairy Lake and handed out many purple TLC balloons to make our community aware of the services we provide.

During the summer months, we were able to support the team at Newmarket Church of Christ on Davis Drive when they held a summer camp for the children in the area. For the second year running, we took part in Theresa Bartley’s Shred-it event in September, which was held in aid of TLC. In November, we held the sixth annual Christmas Shopping Extravaganza at the lovely Madsen’s Greenhouse. Our final event for the year was our participation in the Christmas Gift Wrap Project at Upper Canada Mall, as TLC was one of a number of recipients of the funds generated from this annual charity event.

Then, of course, there was the Baby Bottle Fundraiser, which ran throughout the year at more than a dozen churches in Newmarket and the surrounding area. Jackie was invited to speak at a number of these churches at the Sunday services.

All in all, it was a very successful year and we could not have done it without the support of all our friends, volunteers, church partners and supporters. TLC is blessed to have many people who really care about the work we do for the women in our community.

May was an important month for TLC, not only because of our 20th Anniversary Banquet, but also because of the multiple Sexual Integrity presentations that we shared with St. Elizabeth's Catholic High School in Markham. We did four presentations, of which three were to more than one class. We were pleased to be able to share with approximately 150 students.

When it comes to our Sexual Integrity presentations, we try to be as frank and sincere with the students as possible. While it is impossible to reach every one, it is obvious to us that our use of statistics, graphics and friendly discussion engages many students and compels them to consider their sexuality and their future in ways they never had before.