August 2024: A True Story About Pastor ObiEditor’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 Sarah Corson, SIFAT co-founder I just finished reading Pastor Obi’s final report from his most recent project funded through SIFAT’s Graduates’ Projects Committee (GPC). This report shows a well-done project. I am so happy that SIFAT can help Pastor Obi. He is a dedicated Christian, and I will never forget when he attended the Practicum years ago at SIFAT. This may be a long story, but I feel I must share it with you. While I sit here writing, I remember Pastor Obi and the last day he was with us in Alabama. I cannot keep the tears from my eyes, but they are tears of joy because of what God has done in Pastor Obi’s life, spiritually and physically. It is based on a very hard decision he had to make, and thank God, he chose right!  Because of his training at SIFAT, Pastor Obi realized that his ministry could help meet both the spiritual and physical needs of those he is serving. September 2023: Raphael Returns to SIFATEditor’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 Tom Corson, executive director SIFAT Graduate Raphael has returned to SIFAT various times since first participating in our 10-week training practicum. He has taught in our trainings after using what he learned and implementing appropriate technology in his ministry in Nigeria. In his heart and mind, he believes what SIFAT believes is the Heart of the Gospel: sharing God’s love in practical ways—love for God, for everyone, even for our enemies. And wherever Raphael lives, a little part of the Kingdom of God develops around him. He came to SIFAT this September to visit and to serve us by repairing the Nigerian houses he helped Learn & Serve youth build in our Global Village during a previous visits. When he leaves SIFAT, he plans to visit friends and supporters.  Raphael, a SIFAT graduate from Nigeria, spent two weeks with us this September. Our staff loved spending time catching up with news from his ministry and family, as well as having his help on campus.
Years ago when Raphael returned from SIFAT to Nigeria, he was moved to see migrants escaping from the part of the country where terrorists were taking over farms and killing people. These people had lost everything and were fleeing for their lives, hungry and destitute. SIFAT’s Graduates’ Project Committee partnered with him to raise money to buy 24 acres of land, which he divided into mini plots on which 30 migrant families could grow enough food to eat and have extra to sell for profit. In three years, the average migrant family worked these tiny farms, harvested their own food and sold enough to provide for their needs. Additionally, most were able to save enough to buy their own farms, which freed the land Raphael was loaning them for others to begin this process. This plan is still working today! The migrants believe in Raphael’s testimony, because he not only told them about Jesus, he lived out the Gospel with them every day. February 2023: SIFAT Grad Peter Impacts Lives in KenyaEditor’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 Sarah Corson, SIFAT Co-founder SIFAT works with our network of graduates helping them raise seed money to start their community projects. They expect these projects to become sustainable in the future with community resources. During the past six years, we have partnered with 29 of our graduates living in 16 different countries. Many of them have led more than one project successfully. An example of a graduate who has reached hundreds of needy people for Christ and with new hope for body, mind and soul is Peter Kirui in Kenya.
 Peter’s projects are wonderful examples of how seed money helps our training graduates get their projects started to make a difference in their communities.
July 2021: An Update from Isaiah in the DRCEditor’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 Sarah Corson, SIFAT Co-founder SIFAT’s graduate Isaiah Chot has worked for years rescuing children who were kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Because they have been brainwashed to kill and experienced unimaginable trauma, it is hard to rehabilitate them. Their own families are afraid of them and often do not want them to return. Isaiah started a rehabilitation ministry for these former child soldiers and other abandoned, hopeless children. Dedicated volunteers joined his effort, showing the children God’s love as they taught job training and life skills. Beginning in 2017, SIFAT helped Isaiah finish his vocational school buildings, so they could accept homeless youth who had no other hope of finding a better life. SIFAT Graduates’ Projects (GPC) also worked with Isaiah to buy a cement block making machine both as a teaching tool for the students and as a business they could use to help make the school sustainable. Now, they are able to accept 50 students each session. These youth work together learning and practicing farming/gardening, so that there is food for all of them, as well as some to sell for their other needs. Isaiah says they are taught the principles of gardening that he learned from SIFAT’s expert gardener, John Carr. This knowledge is constantly being passed on to others and has brought hope and freedom from hunger to hundreds in Isaiah’s programs. The school is staffed with dedicated professional teachers, as well as community volunteers, who help the students one-on-one. They have added courses in business, construction/masonry, tailoring/sewing, welding, food preservation and other classes teaching skills that their communities need.  Young students visit the garden. Uganda: Agape Needs Our Help!Agape Total Childcare Center, the orphanage and school SIFAT mission teams built in Uganda, has been hit hard in recent weeks by COVID-19. Although Uganda had been spared during much of last year, it has now been declared a Level 4 country by the U.S. State Department and CDC because the disease is spreading rapidly. The Ugandan government has declared a lockdown, and most students in boarding schools have been unable to return home to their families. At Agape, three of our original children (now young adults) are currently in the hospital, and several more have tested positive with COVID. In the close dormitory conditions in which they live, it is very hard to isolate and quarantine those with symptoms. Although WHO safety protocol is being adhered to as much as possible, the virus continues to spread. Funds are desperately needed for food, medicines, hospital care and to replenish sanitizers and masks.  Prior to this outbreak, Agape implemented COVID-19 protocols to keep everyone healthy. Here early in the pandemic, the students in the secondary school have the temperature taken by the school nurse (an Agape graduate) before entering the classrooms. |
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