March 2024: Spending Spring Break in Ecuador

Editor’s Note: Each month, we mail an article with our contribution statements to the previous month’s donors. Click here to download a PDF version.

July 2023: Our SIFAT Family is a Blessing on this World

Editor’s Note: Each month, we mail an article with our contribution statements to the previous month’s donors. Click here to download a PDF version.

Written by Marie Lanier Narváez, Promotions and Marketing Coordinator

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I just returned from spending three weeks in Ecuador with two mission teams serving in Machachi, south of Quito. During my trip, I met new friends and reconnected with others I had not seen in months or even years. Though our teams were small in number, they were mighty in love, compassion and energy!

One night during devotions with Carrollton (Ga.) FUMC, team members shared about how they had previously been involved with SIFAT. Britt, the team leader, had led mission teams to Ecuador, but he had also brought youth groups to participate in Learn & Serve retreats on our campus in Alabama. Angie served on campus work teams with her college ministry, and she also traveled to Ecuador as part of a study abroad team in 2019. Cole and Caroline attended Worship on the Water whenever they visited their grandparents at Lake Wedowee. As I listened, it was as though our summers at SIFAT were all in one room – international mission teams, Learn & Serve and WOW!

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In Memory of our Dearly Loved Brother
— Cecil Edwin Contreras —

In late March, we received word that our beloved engineer in Ecuador, Edwin Contreras, passed away.

Written by Tom Corson, SIFAT executive director

SIFAT Ecuador Engineer Edwin Contreras

We can hardly believe that we were just standing beside you as you directed our SIFAT team building the addition at the church in Machachi two weeks ago. Today, you have gone ahead of us into the arms of God. We can only be happy for you, as you have graduated from this earthly life of pain, sickness and struggle. You have heard the Savior say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joys of thy Lord!” But, we are sad to say goodbye because we will miss you more than words can express. We have depended on you. When we have needed you, you were there for us and for the children in the impoverished barrios of Ecuador!

Edwin and Miguel, our maestro (project foreman) review blueprints. Miguel will be leading teams in Machachi to finish the construction project there.

Most people would have retired. Although you were sick and your body in pain, you continued to work as the hands of Christ. You felt God’s deep call to help the suffering children. You were faithful to that call until the very end of your earthly life.

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March 2023: SIFAT Intern’s Appropriate Technology Learning Curve

Editor’s Note: Each month, we mail an article with our contribution statements to the previous month’s donors. Click here to download a PDF version.

Written by Madison Gnoose, Learn & Serve Intern

Appropriate technology is the most intimidating part of my internship so far. I did not spend much of my life before SIFAT working with my hands or with tools, because someone else was always around to do those sorts of things. Plus, I have always felt more comfortable in academics. Picture someone who majored in wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture. Do you see someone in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uniform tracking bears, running through the forest looking for endangered woodpeckers or wearing waders while wrestling alligators and catching man-eating catfish. Now, erase that image! I was the girl who used artificial intelligence algorithms to better guide coastal conservation and understand waterbird migration and wrote manuals for citizen science water quality monitoring groups. I sat at my computer all day. Halfway through my junior year was the first time I considered learning additional skills and using my ecological knowledge to help real suffering human beings, not only wildlife. It became my dream to help developing communities in agriculture, which meant I needed to learn these skills first.

After graduating college, as I read over SIFAT’s website and prepared to apply for this internship, I remember thinking, “Learning about poverty, global hunger and how I can help? Yes, that’s exactly what I want to do! Leading youth in loving those in need as God loves us all? Amen! Gardening? Amazing! Constructing water filtration systems, fuel efficient wood-burning stoves and other technologies? Well …”

Madison Gnoose is one of our campus interns this year, serving alongside our Learn & Serve staff.

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October 2022: Worth the Wait

Editor’s Note: Each month, we mail an article with our contribution statements to the previous month’s donors. Click here to download a PDF version.

Written by Marie Lanier Narváez, Promotions and Marketing Coordinator

For 10 years, the church in Aida Leon, a neighborhood in the south of Quito, Ecuador, waited for SIFAT teams to come start an addition for their afterschool children’s program. They had little space in which to welcome these at-risk students to get them off the streets and in school, to help them with their schoolwork and to feed them nutritious, hot meal lunches.

They never imagined it would take 10 years to break ground to start building. Who could have imagined a president wanting to build a bunker and use imminent domain to take the land? How could it take so long to receive permits and clearance to build? But finally, everything was in place and our teams arrived in 2018 to support SIFAT graduate Pastor Wilson and his church. Our teams worked diligently when plans changed, and a basement needed to be dug! For two years, we served the people of Aida Leon, while enjoying beautiful views of the mountains. As we all remember, the world stopped in 2020 and so did construction in Aida Leon. At that time, we thought it might be a delay of a few months, maybe a year at most. However, we soon realized we would be paused indefinitely. That’s where you stepped in!

SIFAT Ecuador Director Dr. Roberto Contreras, international team coordinator Peggy Walker, Aida Leon leader Cecelia and I enjoy treats in the new kitchen — tostado y chicharrón.

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