Seasonal bazaar targets needs

With 20 days still to go before the winter solstice, the dimming daylight of December was brightened Saturday in North Idaho with warm cider, food drives and colorful Yule bazaars.

Cinnamon-glazed nuts sold outside the Simple Pleasures store on Sherman Avenue were popular. In Post Falls, regional artists displayed their pottery, and customers sipped cider at the “Mud and Spirits” art sale inside The Old Church, a former house of worship turned into a cultural center.

The Christmas spirit was palpable at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in downtown Coeur d’Alene, where the annual Snowflake Faire drew a crowd.

Victoria Barrett offered soft pastel teddy bears dressed in “Happy Birthday Jesus” T-shirts. Others sold cold-pressed olive oil, holiday confections, handmade soaps, baby quilts and jewelry. Church volunteers opened Maggie’s Café to feed soup and pie to hungry shoppers.

Some proceeds from the bazaar, a project of the women’s guild, will go to support church programs, including a nursery for infants and small children, said Joan Lewis, guild president.

The 400-member church also has an active outreach program. It has helped victims of Hurricane Katrina and sends care packages to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It helped buy a cow for a Central American family. It also supports a local assisted living center and a St. Vincent de Paul program that helps homeless and drug-addicted families improve their lives.

“We get a lot out of this as well. It’s heartening to see people get their lives back on track. We try to make a difference at St. Vincent’s all year long,” said outreach volunteer Tammy Baxter.

The church also will help send its minister, the Rev. Patrick Bell, to Belize in January on a medical and educational mission to support rural Anglican schools in the former British Honduras, where there are no public schools.

If the church raises enough money, it may set up a small scholarship program for poor children who attend the schools, said David Otto, a retired Navy engineer and head of the church board of trustees.

“I’ve always been an active Episcopalian, but after years at sea, this is my chance to give back to my church,” Otto said.

St. Luke’s shared its bazaar with others advocating for social change.

Madeline Settle of the Idaho Women’s Network, a progressive group that focuses on women and children, displayed a table of colorful enameled pins for sale.

Settle is a member of WomenSpeak of North Idaho, a program started in 1999 that highlights the lack of affordable child care and health insurance for many Idaho families; domestic violence; state budget problems and the impact of poverty on children.

Beverly Bouscher and her daughter Hannah, from the Sprague Community Church in Sprague, Wash., sold bags woven by orphaned children from the hills of northern Thailand. Proceeds from the sale of the $10 and $15 bags will go to help support the orphanages where the children live.

Pastor Dan Hayek of the Sprague Community Church has traveled repeatedly to the hill country to help rescue Thai children from slavery, including work in the sex trade, Bouscher said.

A pamphlet she handed out described the scope of the problem: There are approximately 1 million children involved in the sex industry in southeast Asia, some younger than 10 years old, according to the Salvation Army.

The pamphlet included a Psalm that describes the rescue mission:

“Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy … free them from the hand of the wicked.”