The SIFAT staff wishes you a merry Christmas. We hope you enjoy this holiday time with your friends and family.

The SIFAT offices will be closed on Monday, Dec. 24, and Tuesday, Dec. 25, to observe Christmas.

Until 2008, catch up on SIFAT’s news by reading the December Journal.

On Friday, Oct. 19, 2007, Servants in Faith and Technology (SIFAT) will open its campus to the public for SIFAT’s International Festival. The night, hosted by SIFAT’s 22 international students, will give guests a taste of 12 cultural heritages through food, music, song and dance. The students are community leaders participating in Practicum, a 10-week training course teaching practical skills to meet basic human needs.

Have you ever eaten North Indian Seenshu, Venezuelan Arepas or Rwandan Isombe? Fill your plate with samples at a dinner held before the main program and try foods from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Do you speak Creole or Yoruba? Even if you do not, the sounds of these languages will come alive as you listen to songs preformed in several different languages, including a unique African native sound production. You will also have the opportunity to see traditional dances and dramas from Thailand and Cameroon, among others.

SIFAT’s International Festival will begin at 4:30 p.m. with tours of SIFAT’s Global Village. Dinner will begin at 6 p.m. with the program starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets for the evening cost $15 and may be reserved by calling SIFAT at (256) 396-2015. Because seating is limited, advanced reservations are needed. All proceeds from this evening will benefit the international student scholarship fund. Casual dress is encouraged.

Nate and Marie will be at Mt. Bethel tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. participating in Jubilee. If you are attending the event, please be sure to stop by and say hi! They will have displays about Learn and Serve and our short-term mission trips, both of which Mt. Bethel participated in last year.

While preparing for the Fall Practicum, we realized that our Education Building needed some updating and maintenance. Our staff and a work team from Alexander City Methodist Church in nearby Alexander City, Ala., have “flipped” the interior in record time.

Since our longtime appropriate technology volunteer, Dale Fritz, recently moved, we turned his former workshop into the new library. Because we moved the library, our students now have two large classrooms to use this fall. The entire building was repainted from ceiling to baseboards, and new carpet was installed. We have also received donated computers for students to use during their training.

We’re still in the process of unpacking everything and getting it in order, but we now have a wonderful meeting space for groups using our facilities, as well as a large learning environment for our students this year.

Thank you to everyone who has given their time and support to this project!

Josie Alcantara, a 2006 graduate from the Philippines, held a training seminar on chocolate molding production and packaging to Globe McKay-Sheraton Village homeowners on June 13, 2007. Chocolate molding production is a microenterprise livelihood program of the low-income homeowners in this community. SIFAT Philippines, the Living for Jesus Ministries and the support of homeowners’ association president Willie Ibarreta made this training possible.

The goal of the training is to help women cope with the increasingly numerous responsibilities they face in everyday socioeconomic life. This microenterprise helps develop supplemental income, so the women are able to buy more nutritional food for their families and help provide for their children’s educational needs.

The project engaged the women in income generating activities. Since the homeowners are already an organized group, the SIFAT alumni are now assisting them to become self-governing and become independent from the project.

Ten housewives and 10 high school and college students attended the training and learned about basic and advanced chocolate molding, which are ideal for business all year for occasions such as birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Easter Sunday, Halloween, Christmas or as desserts. Marketing strategies are simply giving samples for tasting and showing pictures of the finished products neatly and attractively packaged with a price list on it. Josie emphasized the “three P’s”:  people, place and price in making the product cost. The ordered products should be delivered on time and following the specifications of the customers.

Josie Alcantara holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration and is certificated in hotel and restaurant management. She is a resource speaker giving lectures and hands-on training for culinary and food technology.

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