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Dream Now for Our Community
For many of us, prom was the moment we looked forward to as the culmination of our high school experience. Even if we would rather not admit it, most of us found ourselves standing in front of a mirror as teenagers, wondering whether we belonged, whether we fit in, and whether the people in the room would be glad we came.
For a lot of high school students, that question gets answered long before they ever reach the mirror. While a price tag should never determine whether a student gets to go to prom, for many students it does. By the time families add up the dress, the shoes, hair, and tickets, prom can run from a couple hundred dollars to well over $1,000. For a household already choosing between groceries and gas, prom is simply out of reach. A night meant to be a celebration becomes something a teenage girl quietly grieves, and then talks herself out of wanting.
One student put it plainly: "Going to prom was just a dream."
Cinderella's Closet and Love Local
As a church community, we believe it is God's desire for every high school student to feel seen, loved, and worthy. Over three days in March, 485 high school girls experienced exactly that while making their prom dreams come true.
In partnership with Cinderella's Closet, a local nonprofit dedicated to providing a zero-cost prom shopping experience for high school girls enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs, about two hundred volunteers came together at the Saddleback Anaheim campus to make prom a reality. As one volunteer said, "Prom is a rite of passage. Everyone should be able to do it."
Each student chose a gown, most of them brand new with tags still attached, then shoes, jewelry, and makeup, without costing her family a dollar. But handing out dresses was never the point. As a church family, it mattered to us that these students were invested in, not just outfitted, and that each girl walked away knowing she was worth the care. An alterations team worked on site all three days, pinning and hemming until each gown fit the girl standing in it and no one else.
One mother stood off to the side and broke down when she understood that all of it, every piece, every accessory, every alteration, was being given to her daughter at no cost. Somewhere in her mind, a quiet arithmetic she had been running for weeks simply stopped.
Later, a young woman with a disability stepped out in her gown and tiara, and the room erupted. Nobody organized it. Girls who had arrived that morning as strangers were on their feet cheering for someone they had met an hour earlier, and she stood in the middle of it and let herself be celebrated. She did not have to earn that. She only had to come out from behind the curtain.
Dream Now for Our Community
None of this was possible without what God is doing through Dream Now.
When you invest in what God is doing through Saddleback, you are part of a church that invests in our community and creates opportunities for people to experience the love of Jesus in tangible ways.
Your generosity through Dream Now for Our Community helped make these three days in Anaheim possible for 485 students, making their prom dreams a reality. It provided the space, partnerships, and resources that brought Cinderella’s Closet and more than 200 volunteers together to serve girls who had never met us before. But, the impact reached beyond the dresses. For many of the families and Cinderella’s Closet volunteers who walked through our doors, this was their first experience with Saddleback. Your partnership helped them feel welcomed, served, and invited to come back to be part of our church community.
This is what happens when we say ‘yes’ to God and join into the work he is already doing across our communities. We are not simply funding an event or supporting a program, but investing into our church, our communities, and creating spaces that move people towards meeting real needs. Opportunities like this create a front door for those who may not otherwise walk through church doors and not only hear about the Gospel, but experience it. That is the Gospel doing what the Gospel always does. It closes distance; it meets a real need. 485 girls left knowing they are seen and deeply loved by their Creator, and God did that through people who simply said ‘yes’.
When a local news crew covered the event, the story that reached Southern California was bigger than a girl finding a dress. Neighbors across the region saw a church move toward students it had never met and ask for nothing in return.
Watch Now
Say Yes to What God Is Doing
God is not finished. Somewhere in our community there is a student right now who has already decided that prom next spring is not for her, that the dream belongs to girls with more than she has. God has His eye on her. He knows her name, He made her on purpose, and He is asking whether His people will be the reason she finds out she was wrong about herself.
That is the invitation. Not to fund a program, but to say yes to what God is already doing in our community, and to watch what He does with it.
Give. Your generosity to Dream Now for Our Community is what God uses to open doors like this one. saddleback.com/dreamnow
Serve. Join Love Local and be in the room the next time a girl turns the corner and sees the racks for the first time. saddleback.com/serve
Pray. For the 485 girls who walked out of Anaheim in March, that one night would become something they believe about themselves for good.
