The Less Glamorous Side of Things

Take a moment to think about the things you post to Facebook or other social media accounts. A vacation to some exotic location is probably worthy of a few Facebook posts. You’re also probably mentioning things like the birth of a new child/grandchild, an offspring’s graduation from medical school, or a milestone anniversary. You’re probably less likely to mention things like, oh, balancing your checkbook, regrouting your shower, or cleaning your closet. It’s not that checkbooks, showers, and closets aren’t important. But, face it, there’s not really a “wow” factor to them.

Currently, Sowers4Pastors is delivering backpacks to thousands of children in western Honduras. Wow! That's worthy of quite a few Facebook posts! They are also updating the records of each child registered in a sponsorship program. While the children are precious, this information-gathering task is a bit like balancing a checkbook. As Trish says, “It’s an essential part, but it’s not very bright, shiny, and fun.” It’s sort of the regrouting of ministry tasks.

In this video (here's the link for those viewing this in an email)
Russell shows the process of distributing backpacks and shoes,
along with the collecting of information from all of the children.

The fun part of this time is that the people handling the paperwork side of things get to add the photos of the little ones just entering the program, to the website. Sowers4Pastors is seeing more and more preschoolers in the program. There has been a societal change within Honduras and people are being encouraged to send kids to preschool. Plus, more schools are offering early-learning opportunities. If you choose to sponsor one of the new children, please keep in mind that preschoolers are not known for their letter writing ability! Sometimes the moms fill in by writing letters to sponsors.

Besides getting to see this sea of adorable preschoolers, the people on the data side of the ministry work are also updating the website regarding children who have left the program. While the Sowers4Pastors crew works hard to catch these as they happen, it is inevitable that a few kids will need to be removed from the rolls at this point. Sometimes kids drop out of school, move to a new area, or stop attending the required church or Sunday school program. Children who are no longer attending are encouraged to get involved again, but if they aren’t going to do that, they are removed from the program.

All of this paperwork has a big upside. Each child’s profile is updated. New pictures are uploaded to the website. Occasionally, you might even notice that your sponsored child’s birthday listed on the website has changed! (That’s because the little ones aren’t always the best at knowing their own birthdates, and corrections are made in later years.)

During this time, everyone is most excited to be passing out the backpacks. The distribution days are crazy busy and are filled with the kind of organized chaos required to complete the task. Meanwhile, the paperwork is being created, and is put aside in an ever-growing pile, which will be dealt with in the near future.  When the last backpack has been delivered, Kelsea, Denise, Kim and Trish will deal with the huge information dump--updating the site and creating child profiles.

Paperwork time will be just as busy as its flashier counterpart, backpack time, but you won’t see how busy they are. It is doubtful that you will see cool videos of the Sowers4Pastors worker bees plugging away at their keyboards. But you never know!

 - posted by Christi