June 13 – 18, 2010 was an absolute BLAST!!! We loved having so many groups from so many different walks of life on our campus learning and growing every day. Last week, we hosted three churches from Alabama, one church from Georgia, one church from Mississippi, and one church from Illinois for a total of 69 participants!

All participants were stretched and taught in various ways throughout their week at Learn & Serve. Raphael Ogbole helped to teach many of the young men and women how to make mud bricks during their visit at SIFAT. These bricks will be used to help build a Nigerian house that will be added to our Global Village. The bricks will also be used to construct fuel efficient cook stoves to help reduce smoke inhalation among women and children in developing countries.

During the L&S week, Vicky Planta also taught workshops on edible insects. SIFAT held a conference this spring that discussed edible insects and the benefit of using them in daily diets to obtain protein and nutrients. The youth had a wonderful opportunity to learn about these edible insects during their stay at SIFAT!

Every Thursday, we take youth groups that have come SIFAT to learn about missions and what it looks like to bear fruit in their daily lives, and ask them to serve in our local community. We send these groups to different projects, giving the youth and adults an opportunity to give back what they have been learning about all week with their counselors. Some of our projects include visiting our local nursing home, lending a hand at another non-profit organization, and helping keep our streets looking nice with the city street department. We have seen that students enjoy sharing God’s love in a very practical, tangible way while they serve in these areas around SIFAT!

Keep checking out SIFAT’s Facebook page for updates on pictures. If you are interested in more information about Learn & Serve, please visit our website at www.sifat.org/learnandserve or call our office at 256.396.2015.

Short-term mission teams, our international field study training participants and Learn & Serve youth groups have been coming and going since May. Wow! There are so many different perspectives and experiences to share, but SIFAT needs your help.

Did you go on a life-changing trip to Bolivia, Ecuador or Zambia? Are you a student, chaperon or youth leader who spent a day and night in our Global Village and served in our local community? Or, maybe as a university student or Haitian community leader you learned simple, appropriate technologies that can save lives and meet basic human needs. If so, we would love to hear your story.

Submissions for the SIFAT Journal or SIFAT blog may be made by emailing your story (with a photo!) to Marie, lanierm@sifat.org. For possible inclusion in the Summer 2010 issue of the Journal, please send your article in no later than July 2, 2010.

Our current intern in Ixiamas, Bolivia, is 2008 Practicum graduate Becky Forrest. Becky served on short-term mission trips in 2007 and 2008 in Ixiamas. She is now in her second year as an intern.

The joys of having power on a regular basis after the blockade opened up and the arrival of fuel was short lived. One of the generators went out of service, and we now hove power on a day and off a day. We are not sure how long this will take or even if they plan on repairing the generator because we have power headed this way from the big hydro plant near LaPaz, which we have been told will be here before the end of the year. This also brings water shortage because we are not able to pump water up to our holding tank. In the United States, we take so many things for granted.

Winter is almost here with the cool south winds. I never realized how cold 65 to 70 feels when you are accustomed to the 90’s, and suddenly you have 15 to 20 mph winds and then the temperature drops 20 degrees. Two walls of my room are screened windows, so I close the curtains, duct tape them to the wall to keep the wind out, and pull out my wool blanket and fleece. In a few days, it will be 90 again. You can imagine how good that cold shower feels good on those days! That is winter in Ixiamas.

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Our first week of Learn & Serve was absolutely incredible! We had 102 participants from 5 different churches from the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

The youth and adults enjoyed spending their time worshiping in the Quonset Hut, meeting new people in their SPEAR groups, being rained out of the Global Village…twice!, playing fun games on the soccer field and many, many other things!!

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We are SO excited to introduce to you….

YOUR Learn & Serve Counselors for summer 2010!!!

(From top to bottom, left to right – Hillary, Hamp, Taylor, Leah, Leigh, Lauren, Bryan, Carter)

All eight of the counselors arrived at SIFAT last weekend and have been spending their entire week preparing for an INCREDIBLE summer. This is such a special group of people who are all blessed with wonderful personalities, gifted with special talents, and are super pumped about hanging out with youth this summer!

Three of our counselors (Carter, Hillary, and Taylor) have been campers at SIFAT, and are now apart of our summer staff. What a wonderful example of the fruit and the growth of our Learn & Serve summer camp over the past few years!

This year, the L & S theme is “Fruit”. Each of the counselors will be leading youth of all different ages and from all different states, including: Alabama, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and even Illinois.

The counselors will be asking these youth, “Where is the fruit in our lives?”, and they will help lead a discussion of the process that it takes to produce fruit that brings glory to God.

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