 Merry Christmas from the SIFAT staff!We hope you have a wonderful Christmas with your friends and family. The SIFAT office will be closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but will reopen on the 26th. —- —- Are you catching the Christmas sales and shopping online? Many stores donate a percentage of your purchase when you shop using GoodShop. Click here to learn more. Each purchase you make will allow you to donate to SIFAT without adding to your total! 2009 SIFAT CalendarsOur 2009 SIFAT Calendars are here! Order yours now! Each calendar features beautiful pictures from our projects in Bolivia and Ecuador. Inspiring verses and quotes accompany staggering statistics about world poverty, which SIFAT works to combat through our training and short-term mission teams. Fundraising Opportunity: We suggest you sell each calendar for $10. Your short-term missions team, Learn & Serve group or missions fund will receive $4 for each calendar you sell. SIFAT receives $6 – a $4 donation and printing fees. To order calendars, please contact Marie, lanierm@sifat.org. or call the SIFAT office. These 2009 Calendars make a great Christmas present. In today’s economy, every gift counts – so give a Christmas gift to your friends and family that they will enjoy, and one that also benefits SIFAT. Do you often turn to your computer to search about a topic in the news, a restaurant menu or maybe even a phone number you need? Now, using GoodSearch, you can search the Internet and raise money for SIFAT at the same time. For each search, GoodSearch donates one penny to SIFAT. One penny may not seem like much, but let’s do a little math to see what a few people can do. Each month, we mail approximately 2,200 SIFAT Journals. If each person used GoodSearch once a week for a month (4 times), SIFAT would receive $88. If everyone did this for an entire year, SIFAT would receive $1,056.–and that’s without ever increasing your monetary donations. 2200 x 4=$88 x 12 = $1056 = Sharing God’s Love in Practical Ways
Instead, by just donating a little of your time, for a search you are already doing, you have helped SIFAT. GoodSearch gets even better – you can also GoodShop. Many merchants donate a portion of your purchase to SIFAT, and by using GoodShop, you purchase directly from the company of your choice, but raise money for SIFAT in the process.
How do I do this? It’s simple. Visit www.goodsearch.com. Type in SIFAT in the box for the cause, then type your topic in the search box, just like similar search engines. To shop, just click on GoodShop. (or go to www.goodshop.com). GoodSearch lets you download toolbars for your Internet browser, letting you have the ability to quickly search for your topics.
The next time you are researching a mission trip to Bolivia or trying to find out how to construct a bamboo house in your backyard, go to www.goodsearch.com and find the answers to your questions, while raising money for SIFAT! This article appeared in the May issue of the SIFAT Journal. To download a copy of the SIFAT Journal, click here.  Sharing God’s Love in Practical Ways                         April 2008 We hope you’ve had a great April. Spring is in full bloom on campus. You can read summaries of the articles in this month’s Journal below. To download a complete version of the SIFAT Journal, click here or go to our news page. A Chance to Make a Difference – Today almost 30,000 children under the age of five will die of mostly preventable causes. More than 70 percent of the planet does not have clean drinking water or sanitation. While statistics can be overwhelming, there are solutions that can change this– one community at a time! Our Fall Practicum will teach community leaders self-help skills in the context of Christian community development. You can be a part making a difference in our world by providing full or partial scholarships for our students. Contact Kathy Bryson (brysonk@sifat.org) for information about donating scholarships or finding other ways you can get involved with the Practicum. Reflection on a Deaf Teen Retreat – A group of deaf teens from Dallas, Texas, participated in a SIFAT retreat. These students were given an opportunity to learn about other cultures and themselves during their time on campus. Tom Hudspeth, pastor of deaf ministries at Lovers Lane UMC, wrote a reflection about his experience after participating in the slum experience in our Global Village. Learn & Serve Update – Spaces are still available in our Elementary Learn & Serve session (June 29-July 2). The cost is $150 per person. Weeks 1,4 and 9 are already full! Limited space remains during the other weeks. If your youth group is interested in coming, please register soon. Individuals are also welcome to participate. Learn about the elementary session and how to register on the Learn & Serve site. Contact Learn & Serve director Jamie (waldhourj@sifat.org) if you have questions or need more information. Sarah Trust Fund Update – We have almost reached $130,000. Remember, our goal is $200,000 by November 2008. Please consider giving to this trust fund, so that SIFAT can continue sharing God’s love in practical ways in future generations. SIFAT Remembers: Two Groups that SIFAT Targets – This month, SIFAT cofounder Ken Corson remembers his home in Sapecho, Bolivia, and how living with the poor helped his family understand being poor. He explains the term “mid-pew America” and how SIFAT wants to be a bridge between the First and Two-thirds Worlds to empower Christians to help one another. Practicum Alumni Visit – Jhony Bandela, of Hydrabad, India, graduated from the Practicum in 2006. After returning to India, he realized these were classes his wife, Prasuna Gajula, needed to attend. Prasuna graduated last year, and she returned to India prepared to implement what they learned in Grace & Truth Ministries. Prasuna and Jhony returned to the United States this year to visit churches supporting them and to share the new expansion of Grace & Truth Ministries. Claude Hurtt Joins Staff – If you have called the SIFAT accounting office recently, you may have spoken with Claude Hurtt, our new accountant. Claude has taken the place of Scotty Turner, who returned to Florida with his wife Jane to be closer to his father. We wish Scotty and Jane the best, and we welcome Claude. If you have need to contact Claude, feel free to e-mail him (hurttc@sifat.org). From the Desk of Tom Corson – Tom returned from a trip to the Holy Lands. In this month’s column, he shares how being in the Holy Land, where he encountered the effects of civil unrest and tourism, is vastly different than being His Holy Lands. Tom challenges us to no build stone temples in memory of Jesus’ life, but rather, to make our own bodies His temple where we get involved and act out His command of loving our neighbor. Don’t forget that you can donate to SIFAT online. Do you want to find out about ways to get involved with SIFAT? Click here. Are you interested in learning practical skills to address hunger and malnutrition in the developing world? SIFAT is partnering with the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Sparkman Center for Global Health to offer a 10-day field study course on SIFAT’s international campus near Lineville, Ala. To get the latest information about this year’s first course, please visit our Field Course Study page. You can contact Kathy Bryson (brysonk@sifat.org), international training director, if you have questions or would like information on how to register. |
|
