Rainbow in Bellingham

Our assembly meets at 7:00 p.m. on the first Saturday and third Wednesday of each month at the Maplewood Masonic Center at 2626 West Maplewood Avenue in Bellingham, Washington. We normally wear formals to our Saturday meetings and short dresses or have theme nights on our Wednesday night meetings. Since the meetings that include formal ceremonies take a bit longer, we like to schedule them for one of our Saturday night meetings. Currently, there are fifteen active members in our assembly, and we are working very hard to increase our membership. We may even meet the state goal of ten initiates for the year. Our main fundraiser is a fish and chips concession at the Northwest Washington Fair which is held in Lynden, Washington each August. Two other Masonic youth groups, Chuckanut Chapter of DeMolay and Bethel #25 of Jobs Daughters, also meet at our Masonic center. We go to each others installations and try to participate in couple Jo-Ra-De activities each year.

Our assembly is one of five in District 5. The other assemblies in our district are Ferndale, Coupeville, Lynden-Nooksack and Mt. Vernon. The girls in our district are very close and enjoy getting together for informal RIM's (Rainbow Information Meetings), formal district meetings and district camping trips. We also help each other out by installing at installations or protemming at initiations. For Grand Assembly each year, we try to organize district teams for the ritual, sports, scrapbook and talent competitions.

Our jurisdiction is made up of assemblies within the states of Washington & Idaho. There are approximately 1500 members in the sixty assemblies in our jurisdiction. Our Grand Assembly is usually held annually on the third weekend of June. At Grand Assembly, our Grand Officers wear wiglets and formal hoop dresses of the Grand Worthy Advisor's choice. Grand Pages are appointed at the District Meetings and assist the grand officers at Grand Assembly. Their dresses are usually a different color but often similar in style to the grandies' dresses - only they wear crinolines instead of hoops. Jurisdictional Correspondents are not grand officers in our jurisdiction, but they are on the floor at Grand Assembly. They wear formal dresses without crinolines or hoops. Their role at Grand Assembly is to explain the similarities and differences between our jurisdiction and the one they represent by acting out skits and participating in a flag processional. Throughout the year, they write to their counterpart to promote goodwill and find out information about Rainbow in other areas.