A Season of Productivity

How many seasons can you name? The list is really quite extensive if you are working for Sowers4Pastors. There’s winter, spring, summer, fall, backpack collection, backpack distribution, teams, profile updating, coffee, odd jobs, etc. Sometimes multiple seasons occur simultaneously, just to keep things really interesting. As things stand now, backpack distribution season is coming to an end and it’s time to jump into multiple other seasons.

There is currently one team on the ground and another one is coming next week. That will complete the backpack distribution teams for the year. Overall, things have gone well but, even with additional help, it has been an extra grueling season. As was somewhat expected, Mike and Marlena had to go back early for the birth of their twin granddaughters. Congratulations to them! Caity also had to go back to the states a little earlier than scheduled. As you’ll recall, Brandy worked very hard to obtain his early release from the military. He worked with Sowers4Pastors for one day before receiving word that he had to go back to Tegucigalpa to handle a few more things. Hopefully, he will return in time to work with the final backpack team.

So far, COVID has not been an issue with any of the departing teams. There were some team members who were unable to come or whose trips were delayed because of COVID.

The most unexpected and emotional challenge of the season was the passing of Ray Negron, a visiting team member from Edgewater Alliance Church. He left this earth doing what he loved, and his grieving team members continued the tasks set before them. Even among believers, goodbyes are hard. This goodbye was compounded by the logistics involved in transporting a body out of a foreign country.

Now it’s time to enter the seasons of cleaning up following backpack distributions, profile updating, vehicle maintenance, and the missionary equivalent of a Honey-do list. Trish and Kirstin are already hard at work taking all of the latest information on the children in the sponsorship program and entering it into the computer. The work is tedious and the stack of information can seem never-ending. But they are tackling everything with the help of Connor, William and Rey.

Rey was a classmate of Ben’s at the local bilingual school, back in the day, and is currently working as a translator at S4P. He is leaving for the States in the fall with plans to become a doctor. Trish and Kirstin are thrilled to have his help with paperwork and translation as long as he is still in Honduras.

Conner and William hard at work
(Rey was out translating that day)

Connor is here for two weeks, and brings with him the skills of computer literacy and car mechanics, and he has already gone around and fixed several of the minor (but annoying) and less than minor vehicle issues some of the ministry's trucks and SUVs were experiencing. William, as you probably recall, is the current intern from Texas, and while he seems to prefer field work, a recent leg injury has him recovering back on the coffee farm. He was feeling the need to get some work done and make himself useful (and to not go insane laid up in bed), so he's helping out with the profiles as well during his convalesce. For both Conner and William, helping with profiles has been a crash course in Spanish! 

Since some of the backpack distribution team members from Life Community Church in Columbus, OH are medical people, Rey went out to translate for them on Wednesday. Gracias is fortunate to have a husband and wife team of doctors. The wife was instrumental in helping Trish through her bout with COVID. The husband handles all of the lab work and does the COVID tests for departing teams. The duo of doctors has been asking Sowers4Pastors to join them in some of their medical work. Sowers4Pastors is deee-lighted to facilitate Hondurans reaching out to help other Hondurans.

Just before backpack distribution season started, the Sowers4Pastors folks in Honduras had a short conference/retreat. They were beginning to have conversations with a missionary organization that has made the move from being a family organization to a larger organization. Although they gleaned a lot of information, backpack distribution made it difficult to implement it so far. Sowers4Pastors has mandated a scheduled day off each week for every worker. They’ve also started making a weekly schedule for things like who will have dinner with the teams each night, etc. Now they’re able to begin focusing on organizing everything that needs to be done into a set schedule. There’s so much to do that even making a list of tasks and responsibilities is a big job. But the goal is to spread the work out more evenly to prevent burnout and work more effectively.

Regardless of the label used, this is a productive season.

-Posted by Christi.