How good are you at those Magic Eye images? You know – the two-dimensional images that can create the optical illusion of a 3D scene. A Magic Eye optical illusion can only be seen when you hold the image close to your face, relax your gaze, and focus on something far away, behind the image. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Or maybe it is if you think it sounds like a sure-fire way to make yourself go cross-eyed. Magic Eye pictures are a lot like the work that Sowers4Pastors does; there’s a lot more going on than first meets the eye and it’s important to keep the focus. The scenes change, but the focus stays the same!
S4P has finished up with the final VBS team of the summer. And just like that, the picture of their daily priorities shift. Brandy and Rachel are working on the dispensas for the upcoming shipping containers. A dispensa is basically a list of every possible item that might be on one of the backpack or food containers. Spoiler alert: They’re a big deal! If an item on a container is found to be not listed on a dispensa, it will result in a container being stuck in port while the ministry pays for the privilege by way of holding fees.
Even though the backpacks haven’t even been collected yet and the future shipping containers are just a plan at this point, S4P prefers to get an earlier start on the dispensas. This year, the task was delayed while they waited for some of the necessary paperwork to begin the long and complicated process. This is a good opportunity to begin praying for the shipping containers to arrive with no dramatic twists and turns.
The Day of the Child is officially on the 10th of September, but S4P celebrates the week before because they have so many locations to visit. The preparation takes about three weeks because it is a very big deal. One of the pastors of Brandy & Rachel’s and Alejandro & Secia’s former church in Tegucigalpa recently visited Gracias. She prayed with them and offered to send a group of people from the church’s youth group to help with Day of the Child celebrations. Last year, the ministry only had teams of three or four people who were responsible for entertaining up to 150 kids at each location. Each team was covering three locations per day and it was a monumental undertaking! Brandy doesn’t know how many youth to expect, but all help is welcome. Pray for the preparations and the people who will help to prepare celebrations for the children.
Kirstin and Esdras will be traveling to the States in September for the backpack collection trip. Thank you in advance to the people who have volunteered to accompany them on different legs of the trip. Those people include Mary Faith and a volunteer from LCC in Ohio (Hi, J.R.!). Please pray for the travelers and the people who are packing the boxes filled with backpacks to be collected.
If you look at the ministry’s metaphorical Magic Eye, you will also see the coffee farm. The farm crew is currently spraying the plants with fertilizer & fungicide and cleaning up the plants. Brandy said it has been so hot that they are anticipating the coffee will ripen soon. Last year’s picking started at the end of September. This year, they expect picking to begin weeks earlier. Brandy expects a big harvest, which will continue in cycles every couple of weeks until the final harvest in January. You can pray for the harvest and the harvesters.
And, of course, pray for everyone at S4P as they keep the focus on God while dealing with the minutiae of different ministry pictures.
- posted by Christi
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