Time to Raise the Roof

We’ve probably all seen movies or television shows where the parents go away and the teenage children throw a huge party and raise the roof. Well, when the missionary parents are away, the grown missionary son does not play. But he does give some serious consideration to raising a few roofs! Trish and Allen are still in the States and Russell is in Honduras taking care of business. In fact, he’s using this time to deal with things that usually get put on the back burner. Sometimes things are consciously put off until such a time as this. That’s the case with sorting through requests from churches seeking new roofs.

Why roofs?

Back in the day, Allen put a lot of consideration into how to best help indigenous churches without making them dependent on North American missionaries. He landed on the idea of building church roofs for two main reasons:

1. Once you have walls and a roof, you have a place to worship out of the rain and sun, even if you don't have a floor or doors and windows!
2. The roof is one of the most expensive parts of constructing a church building in the mountains of Honduras. Many times, the land is donated. The people are able to use mud to make the adobe blocks to form walls. But the roof . . . wood, clay tiles, or any other suitable roofing material can get very expensive very quickly. You might say the cost can go through the ceiling!

Going Through the Roofs

Russell estimates that, at any given time, Sowers4Pastors has between five and fifteen requests for new roofs. Currently, they have about ten such requests. He is working with Melvin and Danny to evaluate which projects to select.

They are hoping to put four roofs on four churches in the next month and a half. Danny is hitting the roads on his motorcycle to get pictures of prospective projects. Those pictures are helpful in considering which roofs to undertake. They are also something Allen can use when fundraising. As is so often the case, there are many worthy requests, but Sowers4Pastors is limited by their finances. Consider helping with the financial burden of assisting a church get a roof over its head. - posted by Christi