This month, Hidden Treasures Chilliwack celebrates its fifth anniversary. Thank you to everyone who has made these past five years a success: our customers, staff, volunteers, community partners, and, especially, those on work release and Escorted Temporary Absences (ETAs). You make the store unique! It has been a blessing to work with you and grow this business, and I look forward to what the future holds.

In September 2015, M2/W2 sent an email about opening a thrift store in Chilliwack. Once again, Arnie Melissen was at the helm, as he was when the first Hidden Treasures store opened in Abbotsford 15 years earlier. When that first store opened, Arnie had asked God to send him five dedicated volunteers to help him launch the business. For the Chilliwack store, Arnie repeated his prayer and again God provided five people, all of whom are still involved: John and Ann Vugteveen; Jenneke Franke; Joanne Boesterd; and myself. Our head cashier, Susan Epp, has also been with us from the beginning.

Unlike in Abbotsford, we wouldn’t be starting from scratch. The plan was to buy an existing thrift store called Back At You. When we opened our doors on October 19, 2015, we had only the store front with a small kitchen and bathroom in the back. The next spring, we leased the attached warehouse, which we turned into a workshop, an electronics/electrical desk, and a space to store and sort donations.

Gradually, through word of mouth and advertisements on church bulletin boards, our staff grew. And when I say staff, I mean everyone who works at the store—paid staff, volunteers, community groups, and incarcerated men and women on work release and ETAs. In the fall of 2016, guys from Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Village (Kwi), a minimum security prison in Harrison Mills, started helping out at the store. Herta Adam drove them to and from the institution three days a week.

When we opened, Jose Goedbloed was managing both stores, and she hired me as the Assistant Manager in Chilliwack that November. Having no experience in thrift stores, I faced a huge learning curve. Yet God provided and has answered prayers in so many ways. It has been really neat to see how God has blessed our efforts. During the last five years, we have turned a struggling thrift store into a thriving one.

In 2000, when the Hidden Treasures store opened in Abbotsford, I had recently quit my teaching position to stay home with our firstborn. At that time my husband, Paul, and I had to cut back and couldn’t support M2/W2 financially as before. (My in-laws were involved with M2/W2 since the early 1970s, and Paul introduced me to the organization.) We decided that we would bring our donations to the Abbotsford store as a way of continuing our support.

About five years before the email was sent out regarding the Chilliwack store, I had told Paul that if M2/W2 ever opened a thrift store in Chilliwack, I would like to volunteer. When the email arrived in 2015, Paul and I went to the open house to learn more. And now, here I am, managing the store.

Over the years, whenever I heard the “M2/W2” verse from Matthew 25, I thought that I would never visit someone in prison. I knew I could help clothe those in need and visit the sick, but I had set aside the prison part… Why would I ever have the opportunity to do that? It has been life-changing for me and my family to be involved in the lives of prisoners. I am humbled that God would use me in this way.

Elaine Warkentin is Store Manager at Hidden Treasures Chilliwack.