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. June 2024: A Month in PicturesBecause our May/June 2024 update is mainly pictures, we are posting images of both pages. You can download a PDF version, too.
Helping Hungry People Can Help Us, TooEditor’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 A search on my cell phone tells me there are 281 million migrants in the world today. The situation presents life-threatening circumstances to the migrants themselves, as well as untold suffering and chaos to the people in the areas to which they go. SIFAT believes an answer to solving this problem is to work on the root causes, which start, not at our border, but long before in the homeland of the migrants. SIFAT hosts workshops and training practicums on community development and providing one’s basic human needs. We have had a number of Central Americans attend a weekend training in their hometown and, afterward, tell us they had planned to cross our border to look for work, which was nonexistent where they lived. However, SIFAT’s training gave them hope and ideas of how they could make a living in their own hometown. “We don’t want to be migrants,” they told us, “but when our families are hungry, we have to do something. Now you have taught us things we can use here at home. We have canceled our plan of migrating to the U.S. and are going to try your ideas to make a living at home.” Yurima is a Venezuelan Christian working with a needy community, where they had little land to grow food. She first came to study with SIFAT in 1994. She has started a community garden behind her church and has gotten her people interested in growing their own food. Later, the church bought a larger plot of land in an area called Villa Paraiso. It is near Yurima’s home, but extends their outreach into this community of approximately 180 families.  In 2022, Yurima took classes from trainer Oswaldo Páez at SIFAT’s Central American Training Center in Costa Rica. March 2024: Spending Spring Break in EcuadorEditor’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. February 2024: Samuel Continues Serving in HaitiEditor’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 In 2010, Samuel graduated from SIFAT. Since then, he has been teaching his people in Haiti the things he learned about growing more food and purifying their water. In 2019, SIFAT funded his first proposal to help 50 women get food security for their families by learning better agricultural techniques and working together to help each other. These women worked hard together, prayed together and believed that God would help them. The project was successful, and the women grew enough vegetables to eat with extra to sell. They could pay school fees for their children and buy things for their families.  Samuel (left) is making a difference in his community by providing agricultural training for women in rural communities. |
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