Christmas in April and May?

It’s Gifts4Gracias time! Yes, the past few weeks the Sowerses have been assembling gifts to pass out to approximately 400 area pastors. You’re probably asking yourself, “Isn’t Gifts4Gracias supposed to be Christmas presents for pastors and their families? What’s up with that?” I’m glad you asked because Trish explained the timing behind this project.

In Honduras, Christmas is not a time when people exchange gifts. Therefore, Sowers4Pastors feels no obligation to hand out gifts to the pastors in the month of December. Plus, it’s not the time of year when pastors are facing the most economic need. Christmas time coincides with coffee harvest and that means that most people in the area are better off financially than at other times of the year. While Sowers4Pastors could potentially rush to get the gifts out at Christmas, it’s simply not advantageous to anyone concerned.

Sorting the donations to create the pastor gifts

Christmas is also the time when they are readying backpacks for children, which have to be handed out before school starts in the new year. Once backpack season is wrapped up, Sowers4Pastors turns its focus to Gifts4Gracias. They had a whopping six days in April when there were no visiting teams and they could work on assembling the gifts.

Each gift box is taped shut and labeled for a particular pastor and his family

Much to Trish’s chagrin, there are no touchy-feely pictures of pastors receiving their gifts. As always, they are, as she referred to them, “assembly line missionaries”! They deliver a whole truckload of boxes to denominational supervisors and the supervisors, in turn, deliver the gifts to the pastors under their direct supervision.

In case you haven’t noticed, Allen, Trish, and Russell are extremely practical. When the people in the U.S. fill backpacks for Allen and Trish to pick up in a Penske truck, the Sowerses specifically request for the donations to be packed in sturdy, medium-size Home Depot boxes. When the shipment arrives in Honduras, and the backpacks have been removed from those boxes, the boxes are carefully folded and set aside to be used for pastor gifts. They get every possible bit of use from the boxes.

Those Home Depot boxes are heading out on the final leg of their journey! 

The project has morphed a bit over the years. In the beginning, it was more of a shoe box gift type thing, but that has evolved into providing filled backpacks for pastors’ kids. On top of that, they also provide gifts for the pastors and their wives. They work hard to make the gifts as personalized as possible. Supervisors turn in a list including each pastor’s name, names of spouses, and genders and ages of the children. They want to make sure each gift is, well, gifty.

In addition to the backpacks, they collect gently used clothing, household goods, and toiletries. If donated items can possibly be seen as having value to the pastors’ families, they use them for pastor gifts. Nothing goes to waste. Clothing that is a little too worn to seem like gifts, or other items which don't quite qualify as "gift quality," get boxed up for the pastors to give to needy people in their communities.

It’s important to stress that most of the pastors in the mountains surrounding Gracias are unpaid. If they receive anything for their ministry work, it is usually a stipend given when the church takes up a collection. Even though they are getting no salaries, generally those pastors save their stipends to purchase something for the church, be it chairs or a sound system. In most cases, the pastors work manual labor jobs during the day and do their pastoral duties during their off time. Receiving things like toothbrushes, bedding, and school supplies for their kids is a great benefit to them. The school supplies, alone, help ensure that the children of these hardworking pastors will be able to receive educations. The vast majority of these pastors are not involved with a sponsorship center, so their children are not receiving backpacks as part of those programs.

The Sowerses have noticed that many children of pastors grow up to become pastors themselves - so making it a priority to educate the children of pastors is actually an investment in the future pastors of western Honduras!

The Sowerses would like to say thank you to everyone who donated to Gifts4Gracias. You helped bring a bit of Christmas to springtime!

 - posted by Christi