It is never easy to be the child of a man or woman sentenced to serve time in prison, and the holiday season can be especially difficult.

The parent is absent from family gatherings, and because of the loss of income the celebration is often limited.

But thanks to a group of mid-valley churches, the children of many state prison inmates will have a merry Christmas this year, despite their families' problems.

The churches are taking part in the Angel Tree program, a nationwide ministry of Prison Fellowship.

In Albany, the First Church of the Nazarene, Good Shepherd Lutheran, North Albany Community Church and Vineyard Christian Fellowship are supporting the effort. In the Lebanon area, Lacomb Baptist, Providence Vineyard Christian Fellowship and Waterloo Chapel are partners with the program, as are Cornerstone Fellowship and the Evangelical Church, both in Sweet Home.

Each congregation is given a list of children. Their names are written on paper angels and placed on a tree. Church members then take an angel and buy one toy and one clothing item for that child.

The gifts are brought back to the church and distributed just before Christmas.

Howard and Yvette Blue of Sweet Home help coordinate the Angel Tree program in Linn County and are regular volunteers for Prison Fellowship.

"These kids are serving a bigger sentence than their parents. This is daily torment," Howard Blue, 68, said.

The couple moved to Sweet Home in 1998, after living most of their lives in the Puget Sound area, where he worked for Rockwell Aerospace and she worked for the University of Washington.

In the spring of 2000, they attended a Prison Fellowship conference in Salem. The organization was founded by Chuck Colson, a former advisor to President Richard Nixon.

Colson served time in prison for his role in Watergate and through that experience became a Christian. He founded Prison Fellowship in 1976 in order to reach out to prisoners and their families.

The organization's Angel Tree effort began in 1982. In its first year, a group of churches in Alabama gathered gifts for more than 500 children.

Since then, more than 5.8 million children have been given more than 11 million presents, according to information at Prison Fellowship's Web site.

In the Pacific Northwest, Angel Tree will serve almost 9,000 children this year, said Larry Perin, the regional coordinator. Perin said there is strong support for the program from churches in this area.

He has enough sponsoring churches already lined up to serve every child in the region that has been nominated.

"We're covered everywhere. We've never been like this," Perin said.

This is the second year that North Albany Community Church has participated in the program, said Bob Long, a member of the church who helped introduce the program there.

Last year the congregation purchased gifts for about 30 children and this year they will serve about 40.

Long said he is drawn to the program because of the opportunity to serve children who are clearly in need.

Howard Blue said the gifts are just the beginning. Churches seek to develop mentoring relationships with interested children and their families and a new Angel Tree program even provides summer camp scholarships for the children.

"What Angel Tree tries to do is hold the families together through the children," he said.