Learn & Serve: Spring 2013 Around the World Field TripsHappy 2013! Learn & Serve is excited to begin celebrating another year and looks forward to hosting many groups this coming spring! Spring is a great time to bring a group to SIFAT to engage in the multiple programs Learn & Serve has to offer. While Learn & Serve offers overnight retreats, an interactive day trip called Around the World is also offered that is especially appropriate for public, private, and home-school groups, as well as families and scout troops.  A participant crosses a model Andean rope bridge in our Global Village during an Around the World rotation. Learn & Serve: New Retreat Programs Now Offered!Learn & Serve is excited to announce two new programming options for retreats! To continue to provide a diverse range of experiences connecting our participants to our brothers and sisters around the world, Learn & Serve has begun offering participants the opportunity to participate in a Refugee Camp Overnight and an Urban Slum Prayer Experience. Learn & Serve: Intern Support Update!A few weeks ago, you got to meet our Learn & Serve interns for the year. Beth, Faniel and Hamp have been hard at work both in and out of the SIFAT office helping support and lead Learn & Serve retreats as well as other events. One component of the L&S Internship Program is raising financial support. Interns are required to raise $9,500 in order to cover the living costs of their time at SIFAT as well as to provide them with a $145 per week stipend. While the idea of raising this much money may be daunting, the process of raising support has many positive effects. Here’s what our interns—and donors—have to say about support-raising: Learn & Serve: Fall 2012 RetreatsFall 2012 is shaping up to be a busy season for the Learn & Serve staff! We have over thirty retreats and events scheduled for this fall for a wide variety of groups. These groups are coming from all over the southeast to spend time on our campus and experience Learn & Serve (L&S) programming. This fall, we will be hosting groups for more than fifteen Urban Slum Experiences and more than ten Global Village Overnights! Along with these programs, groups will also be participating in times of worship and devotion led by SIFAT staff, appropriate technology trainings, challenge course elements, and more. Through these retreat programs, participants have an opportunity to experience how the majority of our brothers and sisters around the world live every day, and then leave with an understanding of what they can do to respond to what they have learned. The most recent L&S retreat was held for Rome First Baptist Church (RFBC) of Rome, Georgia. The wonderful participants from RFBC participated in a range of activities throughout their weekend retreat. They spent time fellowshipping with each other, worshiping, and diving into our programming. The group spent majority of their time at SIFAT in our Urban Slum and Global Village.  Students from Rome First Baptist Church experience worship during their first night on the SIFAT campus. Learn & Serve: Summer 2012 Worship, from Abstract to ConcreteLearn & Serve Summer 2013 Worship Leader Becca Griffin tells her perspective on how worship at Learn & Serve this past summer provided a bridge for students between concrete and abstract expressions of faith:
Many of the words that are used in singing/teaching/talking about faith tend to be abstract and make it difficult for youth to connect. There is no more lack of desire or devotion for them than anyone else, but a lack of concrete example when it comes to living out the faith that they sing about/learn about/profess. Perhaps connecting the ideas of faith with reality is not a struggle for youth alone, but abstract concepts like love, justice, and following Christ, when only spoken about and not experienced or lived out, make it hard for youth to really learn, practice, or live out those things that they affirm, or have been taught in word to do as Christians.  Learn & Serve students singing in worship at SIFAT’s Quonset Hut. |
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