Mama Always Said...

When the American Film Institute compiled its list of 100 top movie quotes, this line from Forrest Gump came in at number 40: “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” This post is a tribute to that great philosopher, Mama Gump.

Biting into Some Coffee Farm News

Coffee prices have skyrocketed! Coffee sold this year will bring double what the same amount sold for last year. That’s fabulous news, right? In candy terms, that news is nothing but creamy and delicious. Common sense would tell us that any piece of chocolate containing news from the coffee farm should have a strong mocha flavor.

But wait a minute! Coffee harvests are cyclical. Last year’s harvest was a humdinger, which means that this year’s harvest is smaller. Plus, the cost of laborers has increased by 50%. For some reason, there is a current shortage of harvesters. Each morning, Allen drives a pickup to Guacatao to hire day laborers. Because of the difference in elevations, Guacatao and Gracias are on a different harvesting schedule. Sometimes Russell or one of the men from the crew drives a second truck. Two pickups can hold about 40 people! The trip to Guacatao takes about a half hour. The trip home takes about 45 minutes because, well… 40 people in two pickup trucks! Late in the afternoon, a trip is made to return the workers to Guacatao. Other costs have gone up as well, including the price of fertilizer. 

All of these things could leave an extra bitter aftertaste to our metaphorical coffee flavored candy. But it is wonderful that increased selling prices will offset the increase in operation prices. All in all, it’s still a satisfying piece of candy. Plus, the trees are loaded down with flowers, which means next year’s harvest should be big. 

Life is Like a Shipping Container?

If Forrest Gump’s mama had known anything about shipping containers, she might have said, “Life is like shipping a container of backpacks. You never know what’s going to happen along the way.”

You may recall that the Maryland and Florida containers were loaded on the same day. Everything went exactly according to plan with the Maryland container. Even though the ports have been clogged up a bit along the way, this hasn’t required any further action from Sowers4Pastors. It’s still chugging along.

The Florida container experienced a bit of a snafu when the truck didn’t arrive to move it from Tiffany’s house to the port. A week later, a truck finally arrived to move it to port on the day before Thanksgiving. That was the same day it had originally been scheduled to ship. Oh, well, there was nothing to be done for that. It would have to catch a later ship. But wait… The originally scheduled ship was delayed by a day. 

By Allen and Trish’s best guess, it looks like the Florida container did actually make it onto that ship, which set sail on Thanksgiving Day. You could have knocked them over with a leftover Thanksgiving roll when they got a call from their lawyer on Friday telling them that they needed to get some paperwork in because the container was going to arrive in Honduras on the weekend. 

The container is now in customs. No one is quite sure how it got there so quickly, but it could arrive in Gracias almost any day now. Sowers4Pastors is working to clear out the storage area and stack the supplies currently in there as tightly as possible, to make room for the arrival of these donations.

Of course, it's always possible that the container and its contents will be stuck in customs for weeks and weeks. Continued prayers for the safe arrival of both containers (and the backpacks inside) are very much needed!

Allen and Trish previously asked for prayers concerning the Honduran election. It appears that there was a clear and decisive winner, which is good news for Honduras in general and good news for transporting the containers. A decisive winner means there will likely not be rioting in the streets, which is definitely sweet news. But please continue to pray with us, that things will be peaceful over the coming days and weeks.

As a reminder, we are still trying to arrange for shipping of the donated food in Minnesota. The transport issues are affecting this, quite significantly. Please don't stop praying about that!

As always, the crew at S4P thanks you for partnering with us in prayer! They always need them, and always appreciate them, especially since we don't know what chocolates life is going to throw our way!

- posted by Christi