adelaide place baptist church

Join us for a short family-friendly service to celebrate Christmas morning.

We decided recently to not send each other individual cards, but instead to make one big Christmas card and make a donation to help people in the developing world.

The children made the giant card for us, and everyone signed it. We raised well over £360. Well done everyone!

So, in church today, we visited Christian Aid’s www.presentaid.org and bought (with Jack’s credit card – but we’ll give him the money!):

• 16 Ducks for people in Bangladesh.
• Guinea Fowl for families in Mozambique (Cindy wanted chickens, this was the nearest thing!)
• Composting worms to help produce fertiliser for people in the Bolivian highlands.
• Goats loaned to families in Bolivia (they get to keep the offspring).
• Pigs for Nicaragua.
• Community Tapstand to provide clean water for communities in Nicaragua.
• and a Cow for Kyrgyzstan – and we got a free ringtone!

These gifts will help poor people in developing countries to be more self-sufficient, and will allow them to make more choices in life.

Are these gifts sustainable?

In the media (including a Radio 4 programme this afternoon), some people have expressed concern about the sustainability and ethical basis of buying animals for people in the developing world.

We chose to support Christian Aid because they work in partnership with local organisations, including NGOs, churches and poor communities. They therefore make local decisions to ensure that the animals are supplied to communities who can make best use of them. More information on this issue is found at Christian Aid’s FAQs and the Present Aid website.

The small print: we are aware that Christian Aid will not necessarily buy the number of livestock that we have “purchased” on the website, but we know that our money will be used to support farming projects in poor countries.

We will be holding an all age family Christmas Service on Sunday 24th December at 11.00am. You are welcome to join with us as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.