June got off to a great start as the motorcycle ministry did another batch of 19 motorcycles. Remember that motorcycles help pastors plant more churches and do their jobs more efficiently.
Allen and Trish are officially moved out of the smaller house and the keys are in Kirstin’s possession. Please note the precise wording of the previous sentence! It doesn’t say that Allen and Trish are all moved into Russell and Iris’s old home. Their belongings are there, but “moved in” would be a stretch! Trish met her goal of having everything out of the small house and having it cleaned by the time Kirstin returned from a one-week vacation. Now, they can all work on getting settled in their new digs!
Kirstin was able to enjoy a quiet week at a remote location about an hour away. It was a cabin-in-the-woods situation, but without a spooky horror movie edge to it. It was sort of a cabin/hotel setting with a restaurant. Kirstin was able to recharge just in time to move into her home.
Russell is making slow but steady progress on building the new house on the property. Completion isn’t urgent, but it will mean that Rachel and Brandy will be able to move to the property with their children. That will be nice for all concerned. Currently, the new home has a basement and the first floor walls are all about 8-feet high. As it stands now, the plan is for the new construction to be Allen and Trish’s home and for their current abode to be passed to Rachel and Brandy, since it is really too big for a couple of empty nesters.
The coffee farm guys have been spending most of their time helping out with construction, but they did recently put down a round of fertilizer. Expect more news from the farm in the future. For now, the fertilizer is doing its job.
Allen finished spending some time working on vehicles. Occasionally, some team members ride in the back of pickup trucks. That process should be a lot more enjoyable and safer with the new safety bars Allen has welded. Now, with Rachel and Kirstin's help, he's planning the backpack trip and ordering empty backpacks to be shipped out to get filled.
Rey, who is a full-time office guy with Sowers4Pastors, is in charge of selling Bibles from the Bible bookstore and keeping track of the food distribution when pastors come for supplies. Currently, Rey and Will, a S4P intern, are also working on assembling pastor appreciation gifts. That amounts to several hundred gifts, personalized according to family size and the ages of each pastor’s children. The completion of these gifts will use practically every backpack in the stockpile. While it’s always nice to know there are some backpacks in reserve, it’s even better to know that all of the backpacks are being used.
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| Nate and Michael hanging out with some kids during one of the recent teams |
Rachel is busy organizing for all of the summer teams’ visits. There are eight teams on the summer schedule. That’s a lot of VBS programs to organize! She's been doing it while caring for her two littles while Brandy was still stuck in Tegus, but good news! While Brandy has not gotten his discharge approved, he has managed to snag a several month leave, so hopefully he will be able to help with the upcoming team season - Rachel certainly hopes not to attempt any more teams with two small boys and no husband!
To make her work possible, Rachel and her family are going to the property each day so Rachel can work with Allen. Trish is happily juggling work and some daytime grandchild duty. No, really. No one has to twist her arm to spend extra time with grandchildren! She also laughed that Rachel’s organizational skills have the ministry more organized than it has ever been.
Stay tuned for more updates!
Stay tuned for more updates!
- posted by Christi
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