Sharing the Vision

Sowers4Pastors is hosting two back-to-back teams with something in common. They are vision teams. What’s a vision team, you ask? No, they don’t arrive with eye charts and they don’t fit people for glasses! They are teams made up of people from churches that have had limited or no involvement with Sowers4Pastors in the past. Each vision team arrives ready to check things out and see if their church might want to increase their involvement.

While on the ground, vision teams spend time with the Sowers family and get a chance to see the different facets of the ministry. Pastor training school isn’t in session, but teams do have the opportunity to visit with pastors in different locations. They are also shown the ministry video and have lots of time to ask questions. These visits are important because they allow the teams and the ministry the chance to pray about God’s direction for the possibility of partnering together.

The first team was from a church in Mississippi and the second team was from a church in Pennsylvania. The church in Mississippi has packed backpacks for the past several years. The church in Pennsylvania hosted a huge food packing event for Sowers4Pastors when the food situation was at its most precarious during the days of COVID restrictions. At the time, the Pennsylvania church hadn’t had any first hand experience in working with Sowers4Pastors, but they stepped up to help meet the challenge because someone involved with S4P told them of the need. In fact, that’s how the church in Mississippi first learned of the backpack project. There’s a reason Allen is such a fan of promoting the ministry by word of mouth!

The locations of these churches is important because Sowers4Pastors already travels to Mississippi and Pennsylvania on their backpack trips. As they look forward, they are being more conscious than ever about managing travel expenses.

As you probably know, there have been some snafus regarding Brandy’s release from the military. He has held up his end of the bargain, but… Goodbyes are hard and the military has been having a difficult time finding closure! Everyone is hopeful that he may finally be returning home to his family within the next week or two. In his absence, Rachel has stepped up in a big way.

Rachel has been coordinating and communicating with the teams prior to their trips. She has also been going out with both her boys in tow to work as a translator and co-coordinator for team visits. Some extra women have been hired to serve as translators and child-care providers. When Rachel is translating, the women are with Nathan and Michael. When a child needs Mommy, one of the women takes over as translator. And Nathan is proudly fulfilling his roles of team mascot and helpful big brother.

Hospitality and organization are two of Rachel’s gifts, so Allen and Trish are extra delighted to have her on the Sowers4Pastors team. You might say that she’s doing the work she was trained to do in childhood! Trish said, “Our kids went out with teams all the time when they were young. It’s fun to see it happening in the next generation.” Everyone is looking forward to having Brandy there to take some of the duties off of Rachel’s shoulders, but she is doing an amazing job of sharing the vision!

Here are some videos about the two teams by the super awesome Quito:

- posted by Christi