Hundreds of people from about 85 countries have come to rural Alabama for training in the 31 years since the opening of Servants of Faith and Technology, or SIFAT (which is pronounced SEE fat).

In a rural nook of east Alabama where there aren’t enough bright lights to blot out the stars at night, missionaries and community leaders from foreign lands are learning to save lives in the Third World not just with Bibles, but with mud, sand and leaves.

Located off a winding highway, an organization called Servants in Faith and Technology has offered training for three decades on how to use common items to improve and extend lives in underdeveloped nations.

On a recent day in October, 19 trainees from 10 countries learned how to make efficient, clean-burning cook stoves from mud bricks. The small, boxy structures replace open fires that the World Health Organization blames for 1.6 million deaths annually in the world’s poorest countries.

On other days they’ll learn how used tires can become the foundation for gardening systems that use only a little water. They’ll find out how sand can be used as a filter to rid drinking water of dangerous parasites. They’ll see how the ground-up leaves of some tropical plants contain enough nutrients to save the life of a malnourished child.

Raphael Ogbole, 42, says low-tech solutions like the mud-brick stoves, which cut back noxious smoke, can have an enormous impact in his native Nigeria, where he works as a Christian missionary on the Mambilla Plateau in the northeastern part of the country.

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