Fourth Annual Alternative Christmas Market
Justice, Outreach and You (JOY) Ministry will host the 4th Annual Alternative Christmas Market on Sunday, December 7th and 14th at 11:30 AM in NCC’s Bridge Hall. Returning this year will be the American Friends Service Committee with their fair trade olive oil and soaps from the Holy Land, and Habitat for Humanity with pins, cards and teddy bears.
Other favorites from the past include Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute where $20 provides school supplies for a year for two girls in Afghanistan, and CAMFED, which supplies school uniforms and shoes to girls in Africa. There’s always a flock of chickens or a soccer ball from Church World Services and feeding a rescued sea lion for a week at our local Marine Mammal Institute.
New additions this year include: insecticide treated bed-nets from Partners in Health; transportation for a Southern California child to visit an incarcerated parent from Get On The Bus; and Lifestraw, a lightweight, portable device that can deliver clean drinking water cheaply and conveniently to nations where diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and cholera continue to claim many lives. Fair trade coffee and our reusable shopping bags (great stocking stuffers) will also be available. As always, give gifts of meaning this year.
And speaking of Christmas gift-giving, how about all those unwanted and un-needed catalogs we receive in the mail. Thanks to NCC Church Clerk Marge Koss, we have an alternative, a free alternative, to stop them before they arrive at the door. Go to www.catalogchoice.org, enter your information and the names of the catalogs you no longer want to receive. Within six weeks, they are gone! Think about all the trees we’ll save!