As you’re making your seasonal shopping to-do lists, here are a few ideas for unusual and meaningful gifts for every feast day - and every person on your list.

Gifts for Life
Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) produces an entire catalog - available in paper or online - of gifts that improve the lives of people all over the world. From a flock of sheep to providing a community with clean drinking water, ERD has a gift for every person on your family. Gifts for Life also allows you to contribute to ERD’s emergency relief funds - which in the aftermath of the tsunami, the Gulf Coast Hurricanes and the earthquake in Pakistan - is truly a gift for life. Visit www.er-d.org for further information or call 1.800.334.7626 x 5129. ERD will send you or the person for whom the gift is designated a Christmas gift card. Perfect under the tree or in a stocking!

Heifer Project International
Now who wouldn’t want a real live llama for Christmas? Heifer provides people in developing countries with animals and resources that help create a sustainable economy. And this is a gift that keeps on giving - a family who receives rabbits from Heifer are required to share the offspring of those rabbits with their neighbors - and so on. Heifer Project International offers gifts of all kinds of animals; if you and your family or friends feel like pooling your gift resources, you can even purchase an entire “ark.” Visit www.heifer.org or call 1.800. 422.0474. Heifer will also send a giftcard or you can print one, yourself, on their website.

Need a little more Episcopal in those Christmas stockings?
Consider a donation to the Tanzania AIDS Orphans Partnership. This project between the Episcopal Diocese of New York and the Diocese of Central Tanganyika in Tanzania has just begun and we need your support. Fifty dollars provides an orphan with everything he or she needs for the school year - breakfast, uniforms, books and tuition. Make a donation online at www.dioceseny.org (under Support the Church). Want to know more? Click here for more information about this project and to read a story about a recent diocesan trip to Tanzania.

The Rattlesnake Pilots have released a new CD, “Songs of Tragedy and Hope from Deep, Mysterious South.” The proceeds of the CD sale goes to benefit hurricane relief efforts in the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi. Visit www.dioms.org for more information!