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St. Lucia Holiday Concert and Festival of Light
Tuesday, December 15, 2009, 7:30 pm
St. Andrew’s Catholic Church

This is our sixth annual ecumenical celebration.

Featuring the choirs and musicians from:

St Andrew’s Catholic Church * St. Paul’s Episcopal Church * Salem Presbyterian Church

Admission is free.
One or two non-perishable goods are appreciated and
a free will offering will help benefit local charities.

There will be a reception following the concert in the parish hall featuring Swedish treats.

Submitted by Rose Ann Burgess.

Do you have news or photos involving your church in Salem or western Roanoke County? You can share at news@sosalem.com.

We are having a Silent Auction and an indoor Yard Sale to support our pre-school. It will be held on Saturday November 21, 2009 from 8:30 until 1:00pm. It will be held rain or shine at Covenant Community Church off of Thompson Memorial on 955 Bird Lane Salem. Our Silent Auction will sponsor many local businesse's

Submitted by Jamie Ervine.

The Mountain Pass Baptist Church on Route 311 in Salem is celebrating their 50th anniversary and would like to invite everyone to come and celebrate. Their schedule of events are as follows:

• Nov. 15- The Virginians in concert at 6 p.m.
• Nov. 18 - Nov. 21- Fall Revival with Pastor Wally Newcomb at 7 p.m. each night.
• Nov. 22- Homecoming with special music and a look back at the church's history from 2 until 7 p.m.

From left at the piano, Shawn Stewart, Cierra Chapman, Carleigh Studtmann, Eunjin Lee (seated), Jenny Hellier (standing in back), Sarah Beamer, Ashton Ledbetter, and Harlee King. Photo Miranda Adkins, So Salem

For the second year in a row, Aaron Garber has spent his Election Day with a group of Andrew Lewis Middle schoolers to compose an original piece for the Salem Choral Society's November concert. The workshop is called "I can create music," and eight students nominated by their music teachers spent the morning and part of the afternoon of Tuesday, November 3 creating the tune "Before the Dawn."

By the afternoon, the students and Garber had selected the title, the melody, and the key, and they'd started to create the innuendos and phrases.

The Salem Choral Society will perform the piece at their Sunday, November 15 concert at Andrew Lewis Middle School. The show "Love me tender: Great popular music from the 20th century" will begin at 3 p.m. and tickets can be purchased at the door, but to get them before they're sold out, call 761-4727.

March 6, the SCS will perform Garber's own original composition, with Richard Bansemer as the librettist "Jesus Son of our Father (The Gospel According to John)" at Shaftman Performance hall in the Jefferson Center. The oratorio will be performed with a full orchestra and professional soloists.

For more information, visit www.salemchoralsociety.org.

Salem's Living Well Church of the Nazarene has a member with a God-given talent, and he's looking to help his church grow by putting it to use. Bill Dalton, a retired barber with a knack for woodworking, is hoping to sell his handmade pie safes for a billboard lease and to put towards their building fund."We're looking to expand to another location," said Dalton. "We have lots of children and members in their 30s and 40s. I don't know when we'll go, but the Lord will give us a place somewhere."

So he's doing what he knows best in order to help.

"Even as a child I'd pick up a board and make a bench or a box or something," he said. He made most of the furniture for the home he shares with his wife of 60 years, Freddie, and says that he can make just about anything you'd see at a furniture store or an antique mall as long as he has a sketch or a picture and some measurements.

The only formal training he's had was at his high school woodworking class. He's a member of the Blue Ridge Woodturners and the American Association of Woodturners. He started making furniture at the request of other people when a Snap-On Tools representative saw his work and asked Dalton to make him a cedar rocking chair.

Dalton grew up in West Virginia in a small town between Bluefield and Welch. In 1943, his family moved to Floyd, Virginia just before he went to be a machinist in the Navy at age 17. But even before the Daltons moved out of coal mining country, he knew that he didn't want to have anything to do with the deadly profession that his neighbors and family were in.

"I wrote an essay in high school that I could be a barber and move anywhere that I wanted to. I wouldn't have to worry about coal dust and so forth," he said. So after he left the navy in 1947, he went to barber's school in Roanoke and then ended up working in Bill Littrell's barber shop on Main Street in Salem where Macado's stands now.

Life in Salem drew him in even as a boy, when he came first to visit Lakeside Amusement Park and then came for a boy scout camping trip at Dixie Caverns.

Dalton is giving all of the proceeds from his woodworking to the Living Well Church of the Nazarene in Salem. For more information or to order a pie safe, call Dalton at 389-0581. He can also do custom work that will also go towards the church.

After much needed growth, Bethel Baptist Church Preschool is excited to announce that we once again have openings in most classes!!  The Preschool is in it’s 4th year of operation and growing each year.  This year the Preschool has grown to 5 days a week, Monday – Friday and meets from 9-1.  The benefit of Bethel Baptist Church Preschool is there are different attendance options, from 1 day a week to 5 days week and they accept children as young as 12 months old!  Offer your child the advantage of a GREAT Christian Preschool as early as 12 months old!!   Offer your child the advantage of attending a caring, academic, Christian Preschool.  Their experienced staff provides a loving environment for preschoolers to learn basic and necessary skills. Call today, space is limited!!  Bethel Baptist Church Preschool can be reached at 540-389-0550 or bethelbaptistchurchkids@verizon.net.

Submitted by David and Kelly Reese.

EPIC is THE Valley Wide Teen-Gathering for all 9th - 12th grade students and it is currently being held in the gym at FCC every Sunday Night at 6:23.

Each week we have a lot of fun....games....challenging messages and praise and worship music...and special guest speakers from time to time, and did I mention a lot of FUN !!!

On November 29 we are having the choir from Patrick Henry High School come in and lead our music for that night

Submitted by Becky Walls

Our paparazzi photo crew was at the Positively Pink Parade over the weekend -- and so were lots of people from Salem.

You can see all the photos in the slideshow above or in this gallery format. Or, you can go straight to the photos of these Salem folks:

* April Witt, Traci Foster and Sondra McCray
* Candy Crotts
* Margaret Brown and Tina Bailey
* Peggy Meadows
* Priscilla Delp
* The Altice family

Do you have photos involving people or events from Salem or western Roanoke County? If so, you can share at news@sosalem.com.

The kids (and some adults!) at St. Paul Episcopal's in Salem went to the pumpkin patch at Layman Farms out in Bedford on Sunday -- and Kathryn Hanson shares this photo gallery.

Thanks, Kathryn!

You can view her photos in the slideshow above or in this gallery format.

Do you have photos of fall activities involving people or events around Salem? Or news or photos from your church? Whatever it is, if it involves people from Salem, we'd love to show it off at news@sosalem.com.

The Salem Minister's Conference is sponsoring this year's Community Thanksgiving Service, which will be held at Shiloh Baptist Church Sunday November 22 at 7:00pm. Ministers from 7 different denominations are currently participating, and others are encouraged to get involved. The service will feature a Community Choir. An offering will be taken to support the Salem Food Pantry. For more information contact Brian Gordon or Janet Denton at janet.denton@salempres.org.

Submitted by Rev. Brian Gordon.