Saint Andrew’s Net | December 2004 | Vol. XVIV No. 9 | Page 3

Are you tired of giving the same old neckties, magazine subscriptions and bubble bath to your loved ones for Christmas every year? Would you like to avoid the racket and tinsel of the local mall this holiday season? How about helping support Saint Andrew’s Children’s Center? If you saw yourself in any of these questions, the annual Alternative Gift Market is for you.

At the Market, you will find items that will support Habitat for Humanity, the Heifer Project, the Laguna Beach Friendship Shelter, and the Saint Andrew’s Children’s Center.

Gift cards from these charities will be available for purchase in lieu of a material gift for friends, family, co-workers, teachers, etc. Third World Handarts will also be selling their goods, offering tangible gifts that help both poor people in the U.S. and Third World countries.

The gifts can be surprisingly inexpensive. For example, $10 helps the Heifer Project send rabbits to a needy rural family, which provides them an ongoing food source, or it buys two boxes of nails for Habitat for Humanity.  You may spend as much or as little as you would like. Make shopping a family event! Children enjoy selecting gifts for teachers or other special people. The Market’s gifts truly help those in our world in need, in addition to honoring our friends and family.

The Alternative Gift Market will be open before and after the 10 a.m. service on Dec. 12, the Third Sunday in Advent. (You won’t be able to miss the display tables on your way out of church!) Check it out and watch all your stocking-stuffer dilemmas vanish into thin air!