Frequently Asked Questions that Shock Us

Allen, Trish, and Russell welcome questions from people interested in learning more about the Sowers4Pastors ministry. Naturally, some of the questions get asked time and time again. Here are a couple of the more surprising things they get asked repeatedly: 

Shocking Question #1

Now that we hear so much from you about feeding children and giving them backpacks so they can go to school, are you still a Christian organization, or are you just humanitarian?

(Shocking, right?)

Allen’s Non-Shocking Answer #1

Our primary focus is now, and will continue to be, empowering and enabling indigenous pastors to spread the Gospel. All of the things we do are a part of that. We believe in helping people with their physical needs so we can also help with the spiritual. 

There is always a tie-in between a pastor and the people receiving the benefit. We always make a point of stressing that children in the feeding and sponsorship programs are fed both physically and spiritually. This is done to advance the Gospel. 

We are not trying to compete with humanitarian organizations, such as USAID, which provide aid from a strictly humanitarian standpoint. If we were, we would just quit what we're doing, and work with USAID - because they pay their employees more than a missionary will ever earn. We are meeting physical needs partly out of compassion and partly as a way of advancing the Gospel. Both of those reasons are very much in line with Jesus’s teachings. 

Shocking Question #2

We know that you’re all about being highly effective with your money and time. So, what’s the deal with backpacks? It's a nice thing to do, but what difference does it really make?

Allen’s Non-Shocking Answer #2

We see children, all the time, who cannot attend school as a direct result of their families not having the resources to purchase the required school supplies.

As we have said in other blog posts (like this one, for instance), typically every three backpacks handed out will result in one child who would not otherwise be able to attend school receiving this opportunity. Another one of those three backpacks will help a family who was making extreme sacrifices to send their child to school. The third backpack will lighten the financial burden for a family, even though their child would most likely have attended school without the gift. 

We’re seeing children who are now able to stay in school for more years. A child who might have received two years of schools may go for three or four. Children who might have dropped out after 4th grade are making it through middle school. More children are going into high school. There are even a few kids getting ready to go to college. We’ve only been doing this program for five years, but we are seeing kids going to the next level of whatever they would have otherwise achieved.

Overall, we are changing the mindset of these communities. Education is becoming more important. It’s a sort of positive peer pressure. There is an awakening to the value of an education. 

We have pastors asking, “Will you start a program with our church?” The school board for a county came to us and asked, “Will you start a program with us?” The problem is that we are collecting 8000 backpacks, but we work in an area with 800,000 kids - that’s only 1%. We’re having a huge impact, but currently only in certain communities. We're making a dent, but the need is much larger!

Allen adds:

We would love to be able to supply a lot more then 8,000 children, as soon as possible. It breaks my heart to think that each year, more children are falling through the cracks! We are hoping that people will not wait until August to begin gearing up for filling backpacks. We need groups to get behind this NOW, so they'll have backpacks ready for us to collect in the fall. Pastors, schools, and entire communities are begging us to implement the program in their locations, but there is a limit to the number of backpacks we have. I keep hoping that one year  - maybe 2020? - we’ll have so many backpacks, we'll need to ship a third container!

Trish adds:

We're already traveling to most parts of the U.S. to collect the backpacks. If you're already filling backpacks in your home location, maybe you can reach out to friends and family in another place, and see if they'd help, too. I'd love to see this be the year of the third container!

 - posted by Christi

Why Tears Aren't Enough

Allen shared a story about a gentleman who visited Honduras for a vision trip, several years ago. The man wanted to see if he could get involved with feeding centers. For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll call the man “John”.

As Allen and John were driving along, John regaled Allen with a story about his first visit to Honduras, in 1998. It was shortly after Hurricane Mitch swept through--killing more than 10,000 people in Honduras and destroying vast amounts of property. Individuals and groups were traveling internationally to help, and John's group came to Honduras for a week, to lend a hand. He helped with construction projects during the day and attended prayer meetings at local churches during the evenings.

As the Story Goes…

On Wednesday evening, John was at a prayer meeting when he noticed a six or seven-year-old girl. She was poorly dressed, obviously malnourished, and singing her heart out. This wasn’t just a precocious girl with a flair for music. Little Maria was crying out to God through song. Touched by the scene, John leaned over to the missionary he was working with and asked what her story was. Maria was standing beside her mother and two younger siblings. The missionary told John that Maria’s family owed a small piece of land and had some animals. During the hurricane, Maria’s father went out to get the animals to safety. In the process, he was swept away in a swollen stream and killed. The missionary said the family was truly suffering.

John wanted to know if the missionary was helping the family. The missionary said they were feeding them, but only twice a week. John was distraught - why wasn't the missionary DOING something more to help them? The mother and children couldn’t possibly survive on two meals per week! The missionary said the family was working very hard to get by. He also said there were thousands of other families in similar situations. His organization was overwhelmed by the needs. They had made an across-the-board decision to provide two meals a week to as many people as possible. The intention was to keep them from starving until a better solution could be found. Upon hearing that, John started crying.

John continued crying. He cried and prayed through the night. He was so distraught, he was unable to work with his team the following day. He continued to cry and pray through the following night. All told, John wept and prayed for approximately 36 hours.

The end.

And Then What Happened?

John finished speaking and Allen wanted to know what happened next. Surely, there was some impactful, inspirational end to the story. But there wasn’t. John went back to the U.S. at the end of his week. Allen wanted to know if John kept in touch with the missionary, to learn how the family fared, or provided financial assistance for Maria’s family. No. John said he got back to the States and one thing led to another. His business suffered a financial downturn. He was busy. Etc…

Did John eventually talk to the missionary? Did he ever find out what became of the family? No, John never contacted the missionary. He didn’t know what happened to Maria and her family.

John shared the story with Allen, fifteen years after his emotional 36 hours of prayer and crying, as an example of how much this child's plight had touched his heart - and yet he never actually reached out to help her!

The Moral of This Story

Crying out to the Lord is a beautiful thing, but if God has moved your heart on a matter, please don’t cry and then go on about your life without doing what you can do. We are called to be the hands and feet of Christ--not just his tear ducts!

James 2: 14 - 17 
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Specifically, What Can You Do NOW?

We offer multiple ways that you can reach out and help people in Honduras, through our ministry - and we work hard to use every dollar as efficiently and effectively as we possibly can.

1) Through our Manna 4 Lempira program, you can sponsor a child for $15/month, ensuring that one child will receive the nutrition they need to grow and learn, the supplies they need to attend school, and a relationship with a local pastor and church community - plus you get the opportunity to correspond with that child several times each year! To get started, click this link!

2) Through our Backpack Project, you can purchase school supplies and fill one or many backpacks, for us to ship to Honduras. Each backpack represents an opportunity for a child to attend school - and for MANY of the children in our area, their families simply cannot send them to school at all, without this assistance! This year, we are collecting backpacks in the fall, during a cross country drive which will start in Seattle Washington in September, cross Interstate 70 to Maryland, then follow Interstate 95 south to Florida, and will also incorporate locations in Mississippi. If you - or your church or other group - want to pack backpacks for us, we will work with you to get them collected! It's fun and easy - we send you a list of the items required to fill each backpack. Contact Trish at trish @ sowers4pastors dot com to get started - we NEED your help to get those kids to school!

3) Through a donation to our general fund, you can help us feed the thousands of children who are attending our feeding centers but are not currently part of the sponsorship program. At this time, we feed over 10,000 children in western Honduras, and about 2500 of those are registered for sponsorship. If you want to help, but don't want the commitment of a direct sponsorship, a general donation to our feeding program may be the way to go. Donation instructions can be found at this link!

Thank you SO MUCH for your prayers, your tears, and your ACTIONS, on behalf of the people of Western Honduras!

 - posted by Christi and Trish

Dear Gabby Revisited

When I was in junior high, I got a gig answering a “Dear Gabby” column for the school newspaper. It was great except no one ever wrote in. I didn’t let that stop me, though. My friends and I used to stuff the confidential Dear Gabby box with some humdingers of questions. This week, Trish mentioned she and Allen were thinking about having people send them questions to answer, which could possibly be made into future blog posts. Trish emphasized that the questions didn’t have to be of a spiritual nature or about the ministry; they could be fun and lighthearted. She then suggested that I could come up with the first question. Feeling a bit like Dear Gabby, I came up with a question, which I hope will prime the pump. My question was a two-parter: What did you want to be when you were 9-yrs-old? And how did you get here from there?

Allen

Allen’s answer was that of a stereotypical boy. When he was nine, he wanted to be a police officer or a firefighter. Yes, before he was a man’s man, he was a real boy’s boy! By eleven or twelve, however, his vision changed and he thought it would be cool to become a pilot for MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) like Jim Elliot's pilot, Nate Saint. When he graduated college, that was still his goal.

Allen said, “That’s why I went into the Marines. I was going to be a pilot with them, and then I was going to be a bush pilot, and do ministry work. That didn’t work out, though. The next thing I knew, I was building houses.”

He continued to build houses and he and Trish prayed for God’s direction. It was when Allen was drawing up the blueprints for their dream home that they realized “this wasn’t what we needed to be doing with our lives.”

Trish

When Trish was nine, she wanted to write books. That’s not a huge shock. She’s a gifted writer (Trish, don’t you dare edit this out! It’s true. You are!) who has always loved to read.

She was raised in an environment where being a missionary was a “very big deal”.  There was a lot of respect for missionaries and a sort of admiration for the adventure of it. While Allen was drawing up those dream home blueprints, Trish was starting to feel the suburbs were too predictable for her. She wanted something more exciting and less predictable. She was definitely open to going to the mission field.

Trish said, “I’ve heard other missionaries explain that ‘the call to missions’ is often just wanting to go. I thought it sounded like an exciting and cool way to live.” She continued by saying, “Ultimately, I am on the mission field because Allen is on the mission field. If he had done something different, I would have been by his side.”

As for her childhood dream of writing a book, Trish said, “Be careful what you ask for. I always thought I couldn't be a writer because I don’t have anything new or interesting to say. Now, I can’t say that anymore.”

Yeah, that whole kidnapping thing definitely upped her interesting story factor!

Your Turn

So, what questions do you have for Allen, Trish, or Russell? Come on! I’ve already primed the pump for you. Don’t make me come up with all of the questions! - posted by Christi