It's Team Time!

If you’re British, you may talk about “tea time.” If you’re a golfer, you can change the spelling and talk about “tee time.” If you work with Sowers4Pastors, you are much more interested in “Team Time.” S4P saw a lot of teams over the course of the spring and summer, but now they're in the final stretch - only a few more weeks to go!

In total, the visiting teams will visit almost twenty different communities. Most of the groups are VBS teams. All are groups visiting children they sponsor through sister church programs. One is from a church with a very large program (hi, Lighthouse!). Another one is visiting for two weeks–with some of the members staying for two weeks and some tag-teaming with other people and staying for either the first week or the second week (Hi, Well Worship Center!). One group was had more than 3/4s of their members under the age of twenty (Hi, LCC!).

Allen often speaks with visiting pastors about S4P’s concept of supporting missions. It’s no surprise that some people and churches think it is better to send money for missions. Other people and churches think it is better to send teams. The S4P belief is that, in a perfect world, people and churches will do both!

Sowers4Pastors wants people to come down and experience what it is they do. Allen said, “Come down. Hug your sponsored child. Bring them gifts. Visit their families. We talk about the bad roads, but it takes it to a whole different level when you visit and see the roads. You see why pastors need motorcycles. We talk about the children being poor, but you can see it with your own eyes. You can see that we are working with people who are too poor to send their kids to school. They can’t always afford to feed their kids nutritious food.”

A lot of preparation goes into making sure the teams have a great experience in Honduras. S4P wants each visit to go as smoothly as possible. At the end of their week, team members can go home and say, “That was amazing!” They might go home and say, “I wish I could be more involved.” Hopefully, they will say, “I am going to be more involved and I am so glad to know the work is still going on.”

It’s a great thing to be able to hug your sponsored child. It’s even better to know that, while you might be able to visit your child once a year, the child’s pastor and Sunday School teacher can hug that child and offer encouragement all year long! This year. And next year. And the year after that. See how that works? Team visits help N. Americans grow their understanding of missions as a whole.

People go home and want to send back resources to purchase Sunday School materials, motorcycles for pastors, church roofs, etc. People want to help feeding centers. And all of the pastors S4P can’t have sponsorship programs for, due to limited resources. Allen said, “We hope people are going home as our ambassadors. We hope they want to support not just the pastors and Sunday School teachers working with their sponsored kids, but ALL of the pastors and teachers. We want them to become involved in that big vision–the Great Commission–carrying the Gospel out to everyone. The joy of hugging their children becomes, ‘I want all of the children going to school, being fed, having medical needs taken care of, and getting hugged.’”

Allen and Trish want to stress how very excited they are to host teams. They are so appreciative of the people who take time off of work and spend their money and vacation days to support the ministry. They are thankful to the churches that send teams.

Allen summed up his thoughts by saying, “We want to fulfill this task God has given us! It’s all been said before, but that’s the idea we want to promote.”

- posted by Christi