We often get asked about Halloween resources at this time of year. We don’t have anything in our range about Halloween, because there are plenty of other organisations producing materials on those themes. If you’re looking for resources or are planning to run an alternative event in your church, here are a couple of ideas:

The Church of England has teamed up with The Children’s Society to produce Halloween Choice. Drawing on the legacy of All Saints’ Day, the initiative has launched a National Hero Hunt. Ideas, posters and flyers, and school and church resources are available from the dedicated website at Halloweenchoice.org. 

Another popular alternative to Halloween events is the ‘Light Party’. CPO produce posters and resources for these. You can also register your Light Party with the New Zealand-based Light Party trust, and download resources from their site.

If you haven’t seen the new slideshow on Pavement Project yet, click here to see how the Bible’s life words are changing the lives of street children around the world.

Change is afoot in Romania. With European Union membership starting in 2007, the country is seeing good economic growth, and there is a sense of progress and optimism. Unfortunately not everyone is included in that progress, as Romania’s Gypsy community continues to be overlooked. SGM Lifewords supporters Florin and Marianne Oprescu are working to change that.

Florin and Marianne live in Pitesti, Romania, combining Christian mission with social projects aimed at breaking dependency and helping families to provide for themselves. This involves teaching the community how to make better houses or sewage systems, how to grow crops on their often barren land, or rearing goats for milk.

Florin and Marianne are particularly involved with the children, caring for some 600 children between three villages, helping them through school. Often there is real resistance from the parents, as they would prefer their children to be earning money than getting an education. Even if they are in school, teachers say Gypsy children are a challenge. They often have to repeat years, they don’t do homework. They know that as a Gypsy it will always be harder for them to get a job even if they succeed, so they lack the hope for the future that would motivate them to study hard.

Florin and Marianne are committed to speaking and being life words among the Gypsies, and are using SGM Lifewords materials to start conversations. Florin says: “We thought Bible booklets would be helpful, especially because we know each person that we are giving them to. We do Bible study and songs every week with a group of teenagers and we gave them each a booklet. Together with them we studied the booklets, with the Bible next to it, using them as a way to start discussions with the teenagers and explain some things in more depth. We see God at work in the children’s and teenagers’ lives. The progress is slow, but we have started seeing changes in their way of thinking and behaviour.”

Florin gives an example of a Georgiana, a girl of 17 who is orphaned and living with her boyfriend Bebe. She recently became a Christian and has started reading the Bible and praying with Bebe. However, Bebe does not want to commit his life to Jesus, because he makes a living by selling stolen wood, which he knows is wrong. He claims there is no other possibility for him to make money. “We are trying to teach them that God can provide in all things, if you trust in Him” says Florin.

• Join us in praying for Florin and Marianne and their work.
• Find out more about our range of conversation starters.
• Photo by Chrystel Rigaud.

My travels have taken me to many countries, where I have filmed stories that have amazed, moved, delighted and appalled me in equal measure. This is my blog from South Africa last year where I was filming stories of HIV/AIDS… it resonates still as it collides with the story of being life words.

Steve Bassett / Johannesburg may 2007

I close my eyes and see it still … a graveyard … the resting place of almost 1400 babies and small children … red earth graves upon which lay toys, teddy bears, Disney characters, broken memories, detritus of medication that did not work, empty babies bottles - the unbearable waste of the future unlived … the wind blows across the site, a pall across a theatre of war … red dust swirls in front of the panning camera lens … in one corner of the site a weeping funeral party watches as a grave is filled in, shovels glinting, turning the earth against the wind as the dear one is laid to rest so appallingly, tragically early … a lament strikes up, a woman’s lone voice guttural and raw but strangely beautiful … haunting … haunted … it is the only sound against the wind; the soundtrack of this devastating comment on the silent holocaust … 120 babies and small children every month buried, forgotten … until now in a small way I have to believe (or else I trample the hope that this sad sacred ground affords) that the camera gives a kind of voice, a kind of memory to give to a world that never knew them or even cared very much … this will stay with me forever, remain, lodge in my heart, take up residence in my soul … as will the compassion of the woman who cares for so many young lives, who stares at the scene and points way into the corner …”That’s where my first babies were buried; now, in just one year, we are here at 1350″… so everything has its place and we all have our pain, our search and our struggle … a final image … a broken blow-up plastic airplane is fixed to one small grave, a simple toy punctured and earthbound with broken wings … I look up and overhead a jet plane sails across the sky, white against the china blue, its vapour trail a comet of a thousand angel wings … oh they must soar, they must fly somewhere or else all above is silent sky and empty, unforgiving, vicious sun … and heaven unmoved as the children’s laughter falls ever more silent…

Tearfund’s Christmas appeal for 2007 is ‘Bring childhood back to life‘, and the charity is inviting churches to make it part of their Christmas programme. The campaign is centred around stories of children and young people orphaned by AIDS, who find themselves suddenly responsible for bringing up younger siblings, or being forced to look for work rather than attend school. Tearfund are providing a free church pack containing short films, a powerpoint presentation and Bible notes for speakers, and you can order it here.

The church is crucial in addressing the issues of HIV/AIDS, and supporting those affected by it. Tearfund’s UK director Paul Brigham says: “The very essence of Tearfund’s work – lifting people out of poverty through local churches – will crumble if we do not meet the challenge of HIV. AIDS is ripping apart the fabric of the communities where Tearfund is working. Only a powerful vision will rewrite the story of AIDS. For Tearfund, this vision rests on the potential of the church.”

This is something we feel strongly about at SGM Lifewords, after hosting a consultation on HIV/AIDS for the Forum of Bible Agencies. It is an issue that inspired our Choose Life programme too, helping Kenyan school children to make good life decisions, and you can find out more about that here. As our Programmes Director Dave Traher sums it up, “HIV/AIDS demands a response from God’s people.”

The Christingle has its roots in the Moravian church, but it was re-invented in the 1960s by the Children’s Society and is now a regular feature of many churches’ Christmas events. It is, in essence, a visual aid - an orange with a ribbon around it, a candle on top, and sweets on cocktail sticks in the sides. To find out what it all stands for, you’ll have to visit the The Children’s Society’s website.

The Society has a range of downloadable resources to help run a Christingle event, including instructions, service outlines and ideas, songs to use, and you’ll find all those materials here.

Those of you concerned about the ’small children+naked flame’ equation may be interested to know that The Children’s Society have partnered with glow-candles.com to offer a less flammable alternative.

While we were discussing what to make this year, we realised that there’s plenty of options for Christmas, but nothing to speak of for Advent. The result is our Advent family devotions cards.

Going from A to Z, and the 1st of December to the 26th, the cards tell the story of the Bible from Genesis to Jesus’ birth.

There are three ways to get hold of the series.

1. You can download the whole set of cards here. Print them off on card, cut them up, and you’re ready to go.

2. Check back here on the 1st of December. We’ll be posting them throughout advent.

3. Sign up to receive them by email. Leave us your address and we’ll send you one a day until Christmas.

This Christmas Lifewords is supplying thousands of copies of our Meet the Cast booklet to Operation Christmas Child. Lifewords Europe will be supplying the booklets for distribution to underprivileged children in Russia and the Ukraine.

Operation Christmas Child is run every year by Samaritan’s Purse. Churches and individuals in the UK and elsewhere put together shoe-boxes full of toys and other items, and these are given out to children in poorer parts of the world. It’s not too late for your church to get involved - find out more about it here.

We’re always really pleased to see our Christmas materials in use in the real world, so it was great to stumble across this while testing the ‘googleability’ of the new christmas site. Look closely at the windows of this church and you can definitely make out some characters inspired by our Meet The Cast crew.

This is Main Street Community Church in Frodsham, who ran a ‘Christmas Journey’ last year. They’ve very helpfully built a website explaining what they did, how it can be done, and where to go to get all the resources you need. You can find that at christmasjourney.org.uk

The graphics used here, which the team at Frodsham also used to make invites and even t-shirts, are available for downloading here.