July 2020: Graduates in Action Around the Globe

Editor’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 Marie Lanier, Promotions and Marketing Coordinator

SIFAT has been training community leaders in development for 41 years. As community needs change, our graduates’ ministries often shift their focus. A global pandemic? That is definitely a call for adaptation to meet immediate needs. Around the world, governments are enacting strict lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, which has led to economic hardships and job loss, inflation and food shortage. We reached out to a few of our graduates  for updates, so we can better understand the challenges they face, but also to see the ways they are thriving, despite unexpected circumstances.

Awon (center) leads a Bible study with a group of college students quarantining together in India.

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Learn & Serve: Birmingham Youth Support SIFAT Training Graduate in Nigeria!

Pastor Ogbatabo is a pseudonym for one of our SIFAT graduates and trainers in Nigeria. Because of his work in a violent area, we want to protect his identity for his safety. Pastor Ogbatabo submitted a proposal to SIFAT, which was approved as a SIFAT international project. 

SIFAT’s Learn & Serve department pledged to help Pastor Ogbatabo fund his project through educating North American youth on the issue of smoke inhalation around the world and allowing them the chance to partner with SIFAT through financial contributions.  Several L&S staff members and leaders from various participating groups have contributed.  One inspiring story of a group committing to fund Pastor Ogbatabo’s project comes from Canterbury United Methodist Church of Birmingham, Alabama.

When students from Canterbury UMC met Pastor Ogbatabo while at SIFAT during Summer 2013, they decided they wanted to sponsor his project in Nigeria. After telling their friends and parents about Pastor Ogbatabo and his work, they decided to take up an offering once a month at their Sunday night youth program.

Canterbury UMC students keep a tally of the amount raised each month on their prayer (chalkboard) wall in a drawing of the rocket stove.

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Alumni Update: Dea Lieu of the Ivory Coast passes away

This is one of our favorite pictures of Dea Lieu (left) from his time at SIFAT.

We are very sad to bring you news of the death of one of our beloved partners in ministry, SIFAT graduate Dea Lieu. He died in the hospital on the morning of November 20 of an infection in his lungs. We do not have details at this time, but we do ask for your prayers for his wife Charlotte, and their children, Desire’-Michel, Louis, Fabien, Vistorian and Armande and for his co-workers in mission in their war ravaged country, Cote D’Ivoire, or the Ivory Coast in English.

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Happy New Year! Constance, one of our 2008 Practicum graduates, has recovered from a successful surgery and is now back home with her family. She arrived in Nigeria on New Year’s Day. In her e-mail to us, she excitedly told of reuniting with her family at Sunday morning worship on Jan. 3. During January, she will be joining her church family in prayer and fasting as she seeks how God wants her to implement the training she received at SIFAT into her work with women and girls.
Thank you for all of the prayers and support for Constance during her doctor visits and sugery. If you missed reading about Constance’s Christmas miracle, you can find it in the Nov./Dec. 2008 Journal.

Don’t forget, you can always access both present and past Journals on the news page!