SHARING SMILES AND COMBINING CULTURES Smiles for Christ holds an annual Latin Fest fundraiser for students Latin Fest offered the Harding and Searcy communities an opportunity to learn about Latin American cultures and people and to help the Smiles for Christ organization raise money for APANJE, a school for mentally handicapped adults in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Smiles for Christ hosted the third annual Latin Fest in April. Representatives from nine Latin American countries participated in the festival, offering visitors food and fun. Senior Rafael Guillen, Smiles for Christ president, said that months of planning and dozens of volunteers were the key to growing and improving the event. The Latin Fest, Smiles for Christ's most significant activity in the spring semester, was a complex undertaking due to the difficulty of coordinating the schedules of 50 to 60 volunteers and the rising number of attendees. The festival was a consistent success with about 400 people in attendance. "If you are interested in meeting new people, getting to know people from other countries, or even interested in different HUmanity cultures it would be great for people to come," sophomore Alejandra Rodriguez said. "Also, if you like to eat, that is a great reason to come to the Latin Fest." Students were able to go booth to booth learning unique facts about each country. They enjoyed activities and food such as mariachis from Mexico, tostadas from Guatemala, folk dances from Nicaragua and soccer from Honduras. "I was cooking at the booth the famous charamuscas from El Salvador," sophomore Nicol Pastran said. "Charamuscas are basically a natural juice or frozen soda in a small bag, but we showed people how to eat them like Salvadorans do." Due to the success of the Latin Fest, the Harding administration offered Smiles for Christ directors an opportunity to gain more publicity for the event by hosting Latin Fest during Spring Sing weekend. "After the third event, Dean Collins suggested that we should add the Latin Fest as part of Harding's activities. So, next year it is likely that we are going to be part of the Spring Sing activities," Guillen said. Part of the improvement and expansion of any organization was the refinement of its goals and mission statement. "We have changed our mission statements to two major things. The first one is 'to be like Him' which focuses on trying to be more like Christ," Guillen said. "And the second [change] is our mission statement, 'just to serve' and vision statement, 'to inspire others to serve.' So, if we can serve and inspire others to serve we would have accomplished the Smiles for Christ mission." The money collected during the activity was sent to APANJE to help fund a new school building. Smiles for Christ members visited APANJE every summer for a week to spend time with the students there. Smiles for Christ member junior Sabrina Ruiz said the students were a joy and a blessing, so it meant a lot for the organization to help them out that way. Smiles for Christ created the Latin Fest as a way to celebrate Latin American culture and to share it with Harding students, while serving people and blessing them with a new school building. Henry Gonzalez Volunteer Harding Est. 2012: Row 1: M. Schultz, A. Rodriguez, S. Hoover, J. Kirkham. Row 2: J. Rucker (sponsor), C. Palmore, J. Williams, L. Abila, A Zivney. Est. 2010: Row 1: P. Walker, J. Lindsey, G. Long, J. Klotz, J. Edens. Row 2: K. Daly. Row 3: A Musslewhite, D. Gibbs, A Jahandarfard. Row 4: C. Peyton, M. Stewart, B. Ash. Service I 261
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