This is an All Skate!

At the risk of aging myself, I spent a good part of my childhood Saturdays at my hometown roller rink. At the risk of aging myself more, a lot of that time was spent skating to tunes by such artists as Captain & Tennille and Donny & Marie, but there’s no reason to go into that. If you spent any time at a roller rink, you know that sometimes an announcer would crackle across the P.A. system with such instructions as, “This one is for couples only.” That was my cue to go buy myself some tater tots. But, soon, that same crackly voice would announce, “This is an all skate,” and I would take my greasy fingers back out to the floor to skate my little heart out. Why am I telling you this? Well, dear ones, this blog post is an all skate!

You probably know that Allen, Trish, and Russell are busy planning the next backpack trip. While they are mapping out their routes, we need you to start lacing up your skates to get involved. You see, the Sowerses aren’t doing this just because they love road-tripping across America. They are doing this to collect backpacks. It would be great if they had a lot of backpacks to collect.

In case you need a refresher course as to why the backpacks are important, I will remind you of the implications of giving a child in Honduras a backpack filled with school supplies. Without school supplies and a pair of school shoes, many families can’t afford to send their children to school. Even though the government has reduced the requirement for school uniforms, each child is expected to have a pair of proper shoes (not sneakers or flip flops) to wear to school. Students are also expected to arrive with the necessary supplies. Allen and Trish have crunched the numbers and it is about four times more expensive to purchase shoes and school supplies in Honduras. It is actually far more cost effective to collect these items in the States and ship a container to Honduras.

In the communities where Sowers4Pastors has been distributing backpacks, schools are having to build on extra classrooms because so many more children are attending classes. That’s great news! Some communities have multiple schools scattered throughout the area because of the terrain and the distances children have to walk. In some of those communities, Sowers4Pastors has been able to provide backpacks for children at some of the schools and not at others. Naturally, people are begging for their schools to be included in the backpack project, as well. The bottom line is that the more backpacks Sowers4Pastors receives, the more children will get to attend school!

First leg of trip, approximately September 3 - 24

Second leg of trip,
Approximately October 1 - 11

Trish has a set of handy-dandy maps of the general locations where they plan to collect backpacks. This year, they are adding a drive down the west coast from Seattle to Los Angeles, and then over to Phoenix, before they zigzag back to the east coast. They are also adding a drive from New Hampshire to Maryland, at the start of the "down the east coast" portion of the trip. Their current plan also includes flying to Texas to collect backpacks there and “jogging over to catch Nashville” at some point. While the West Coast and New Hampshire are now definitely on the schedule, there are currently no commitments out of Texas or Nashville. While there are people interested in having a backpack drive in these locations, they have not yet committed. Now is the time to do that.

Third leg of trip, approximately Oct. 15 - however long it takes

If you are interested in being a part of the backpack project, anywhere along the general route, please contact Trish (trish at sower4pastors dot com) so they can finalize their route. Remember: the more backpacks they can collect, the more cost-effective their trip will be. So, why don’t you skate on over to commit?

 - posted by Christi