Alternative Christmas Market 2023
A Missions Committee hosted event.
Welcome to the Alternative Christmas Market
In the spirit of making God’s love tangible, the Graham Memorial Missions Committee has hosted Alternative Christmas Markets for many years. For much of that time, we embellished the Parish Hall with Christmas decorations, arranged displays for various missions, invited our mission partners to attend in person, and invited the congregation to align their hearts with Christ’s by shopping at the ACM. Your generosity over the years has impacted many lives both in our community and around the world. Due to the difficulty and cost of travel which has existed since 2020, we have found it increasingly difficult for our missionaries to arrange to come on a single date, and that it is more effective for us to have our supported missionaries visit with us individually during the year rather than attempting to come in a group in December. The Alternative Christmas Market has thus been held in a virtual format since 2020. In 2023, we were blessed to have 11 of our 13 missions make “in person” visits visit and speak at least once to our congregation.
This year we will again feature thirteen missions, all of which we have supported in 2023. These are: Angel Tree, Baja Presbyterian Missions, International School Project (Doug and JoAnn Radunzel), New Day Urban Ministries, Steve and Sara Currey (with Pioneers), Best PCS Ever!, San Diego Rescue Mission, Seven Sisters International, Sojourner Charitable Fund, TDMM/New Generations, Urban Youth Collaborative, Matt and Bethany Mowad (with Mission Quest) and Wycliffe Bible Translators . Although Megan Smith is no longer with Wycliffe and has taken a position on our staff (she is now a member of our Missions Committee!), we will continue to support Wycliffe Bible Translators in 2024. We are working with Wycliffe and its partner JAARS to select a new Wycliffe missionary which we can support long term beginning in 2024. These missions need your support more than ever before. Please continue to scroll down to see each ministry’s role in enhancing God’s Kingdom.
In honor of your gift(s), you may request Alternative Christmas Market card(s). Cards refer to a specific mission and its ministry and can be used as alternative gifts for friends and family. Forget about crowded malls, no heavy packages or chic indulgences – shop the ACM and enjoy the pure joy of helping our brothers and sisters in need. You may authorize us to provide your contact information to the missions you have supported by checking the authorization box on the Contribution Form or online. By doing this, you will allow our mission partners to contact you directly.
The Missions Committee wishes you and yours a great Christmas season! Thank you, in advance, for participating in ACM 2023. Our mission partners thank you as well.
Angel Tree
Angel Tree is a program of Prison Fellowship that reaches children of prisoners and their families with the love of Christ. Every child has a story. For 2.7 million children in the U.S., that story may be filled with abandonment, loneliness, and shame that comes from having a mom or dad in prison. For many, it may also include following their parents down the same destructive road to incarceration.
It starts with a gift. Volunteers from Graham Memorial are mobilized to shop for and deliver gifts, the Gospel, and a personal message of love to children from their mom or dad in prison. Each Angel Tree child is also given a free, age appropriate Bible. Your support this Christmas will be an encouragement to families who are struggling with feeling lost and ostracized from one another.
While it starts with a gift, very often the simple act of gift giving leads broken families to new or restored relationships. The Graham Memorial Angel Tree Program directly serves families of our neighbors in Imperial Beach (56 children in 2019) and, as fund-raising permits, assists the national Angel Tree Program by providing gifts by mail to underserved communities in areas of our country without a local church-led Angel Tree Program (25 children in Tennessee in 2019). The ministry of Angel Tree doesn’t end in December. All year, you can join Angel Tree to help to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of families in your community through camp scholarships, sports clinics, and mentoring opportunities.
To volunteer as an Angel Tree Shopper or to serve doing Gift Delivery, please contact Jon Mosier.
Baja Presbyterian Missions
Baja Presbyterian Missions promotes Christ's message of hope in Baja California by building missions and churches. This ministry works to serve the communities of Cañón de Buena Vista, Ensenada, Mexicali, San José del Cabo, San Luis Río Colorado, San Quintín, Tecate, and Tijuana.
When Baja Presbyterian Missions entered the Mexican mission field in 1964, there were no Presbyterian churches in Baja. Since then, this ministry has helped build 34 Spanish-speaking Presbyterian churches throughout the Norte and Baja Sur communities. They also help support these newly planted churches until they become self-sufficient. Since 2020, they have provided substantial medicine, food, health assistance, and other support for the immediate needs of the local Baja community.
International School Project
International School Project (ISP) is a resource for educators around the world, giving support and professional skills to teachers who may be feeling burned out or under-supported. When you reach a teacher, you can change the world. One teacher who joins a community of confident and empowered teachers can find the energy to continue teaching and have an impact on thousands of students and their families year after year.
International School Project has been supported by Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church for over 20 years. Doug and JoAnne Radunzel have ministered under Campus Crusade (now CRU) their entire adult lives. They worked with Russian and Ukrainian athletes for 15 years and then transferred to ISP. Doug and JoAnne recruit and prepare teachers for short-term mission trips to Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Ukraine. These countries have invited ISP to bring Christian ethics and morality-based curriculum to their classrooms. They have worked in more than 35 countries, equipping more than 100,000 public school teachers.
Currently, there are teachers working in the war zones of Ukraine, as well as in Romania, Hungary Albania, Zimbabwe, Cambodia, Vietnam, Spain, Mexico and Equador.
The Mowads in Thailand
The Mowads moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2017 after Matt retired from serving 23 years as a US Navy pilot. Equipped with the message of the Gospel, they develop disciples and provide humanitarian relief in Thailand, Cambodia, and oppressed ethic groups in Burma. The Mowads partner with several pastors, missionaries, and organizations to support poverty relief, armed forces families, leadership consulting, aviation programs, at risk youth, business development, and the prevention of and recovery from explicit media use. By meeting these needs, they can establish relationships and open doors to share the Gospel, raise up Christian leaders, and network believers throughout the region. Their two daughters attend a local international school where Bethany also volunteers as the varsity swim team coach.
Bethany currently works with a sewing center that helps to train, employ, and disciple at risk Thai mothers. Matt flies to remote areas in Southeast Asia where he ministers the Gospel to men in the Thai military through a range of teaching and group programs. Your support this year will continue to help fund the work of the Mowad family in all their many ministries.
New Day Urban Ministries
New Day Urban Ministries, formerly known as Presbyterian Urban Ministries, was formed in 1968 by the San Diego Presbytery. By focusing on a hand up rather than a hand out, New Day seeks to equip people in need with the tools they need to stabilize their lives. This ministry provides resources which include psychological, social, and spiritual services.
Graham Memorial has been supporting this ministry since its inception and has also been instrumental in fundraising through Golf4Good, the ministry’s major annual fundraiser. New Day Urban Ministries is known for their service in providing emergency food, baby supplies, clothing, hygiene kits, and counseling, as well as resources necessary for jobs, such as ID recovery, resume assistance, transportation vouchers, and work tools.
Although New Day’s primary work is to give the homeless a “way up”, the distribution of food and clothing to needy families is an important part of their ministry.
New Generations
New Generations is a supporting ministry for the ministry TDMM (Transformational Disciple Making Ministries) based in the Horn of Africa. This ministry was started by Aychi Beyene (who you may have met this summer during Island Family Nights) as a ministry committed to making disciples. New Generations is empowering ordinary people all over the world to create chain reactions of disciples making disciples.
Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church has supported this ministry and its predecessor organization for 16 years. New Generations trains new leaders and churches to plant new churches by using the Disciple Making Movements (DMM) model. They have over 300 partner organizations that are is instrumental in training leaders throughout Africa and beyond. In November of 2018, the Light and Life Center was dedicated -- the funding for which was raised, in large part, by Graham Memorial.
Through TDMM, Aychi Beyene, family, and the staff continue to do God’s work by not telling people what to do, but helping them discover from reading the Word what they should be doing. Despite the ever-present challenges of conflict and disease, they have continued in 2022 to train coaches to evangelize and bring thousands of new followers to Jesus. Your support will help to continue the chain reactions of disciple-making throughout Africa and around the world.
Pioneers
Pioneers is a large mission agency that began work with unreached people groups more than 30 years ago. Steve Currey has been with Pioneers for over 20 years and was recently promoted to Associate International Director, overseeing the work in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Recently relocated by Pioneers to the US, Steve directs the leaders and teams who plant churches across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Their daughters Annie and Julia are faithful witnesses who are now at Wheaton College.
Pioneers works in partnership with the local church. Each missionary is commissioned by a sending church. The unreached are cultural and ethnic groups without a self-sustaining witness to the gospel in their own cultures. That is why it is so important for missionaries to be supported by the sacrificial gifts of friends, family, and churches, that they may work alongside local believers with a heart to see disciples making disciples, worldwide.
From business and education to healthcare, agriculture, the arts, Pioneer's 3,000 global members use their diverse gifts and experience to serve in needy communities. As they do, they see God transform lives across cultures and people groups everywhere. Your gifts help support the Currey family in their outreach. This year, along with your gifts, the Currey family has asked for our prayers for the end to the turmoil in Ukraine, Africa, and the Middle East.
San Diego Military Outreach Ministries & Best PCS Ever!
San Diego Military Outreach Ministries, originally formed as Military Parish Visitors, has been serving junior enlisted military families in the region since WWII. This ministry is affectionately referred to as “MOM.” MOM is a nondenominational faith-based organization, guided by Christian values, whose mission it is to provide help with some basic needs, as well as hold events that enhance the quality of life, for military junior enlisted families.
And, did you know that Graham has our own military outreach ministry? We seek to share the love of Christ with military members by building long term relationships with local Coronado-based military members. In the last two years, we have hosted monthly food and diaper distributions, a free fun day with jumpers, hot dogs, and face painting, and worked with the youth group to provide families with Thanksgiving boxes. Our largest event, The Christmas Store, is scheduled for Dec 12, serving 110 junior enlisted families with 212 kids, aged 1 month to 17 years. Junior enlisted families shop, sip hot cocoa, and spend time in prayer and celebration with members of the community and the congregation.
Your gifts directly allow these outreach ministries to continue their work, providing resources that range from diapers to dinner, and from turkeys to toys.
San Diego Rescue Mission
San Diego Rescue Mission lovingly addresses the needs of men, women, and children experiencing homelessness through their holistic, Christ-centered approach to recovery and rehabilitation. The primary focus of this ministry is the Mission Academy – a 12-month residential program with three semesters: 1) Wellness (aimed at improving physical, emotional, and spiritual health), 2) Job Training & Education (includes going back to school, receiving certification, and job readiness), and 3) Housing (developing a personalized plan to secure housing). An optional 4th semester is Graduate Housing.
The Rescue Mission also operates an emergency shelter for women and children, a licensed Christian preschool, and a food distribution program, called Partners for Hunger Relief. Take a moment to watch this testimonial video to hear more about the impact this ministry has on men and women everyday in our community!
Urban Youth Collaborative
Founded by Rev. Dr. Nate Landis in 2007, Urban Youth Collaborative brings the good news of Jesus into one hundred public middle and high schools in San Diego, Tijuana, and Atlanta. Our mission is to win students to Christ, especially those from disadvantaged communities, connect them to a local church where they can grow as disciples, and mobilize them as servant leaders who transform their schools, families, and communities. By showing Jesus’ love in practical ways, UYC has grown to reach thousands of students every week through life-changing relationships, supporting more than 100 school clubs in San Diego, Atlanta, South Carolina and Mexico. Our expanding coalition of local churches, campus allies, student leaders, devoted staff, and gospel patrons makes this ministry possible.
Wycliffe Bible Translators
For more than 30 years, our Missions Committee has supported missionaries working with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Our support has been both directly to Wycliffe and through support for Jungle Aviation and Relay Service (JAARS), which provides logistical support for Wycliffe translators working in remote areas worldwide. Your donation will allow us to begin support of a new Wycliffe/JAARS translator mission team in 2024.