Things on the Back Burners

If you’ve ever tried to prepare a big holiday meal, you understand the importance of back burners. That’s where you can put things that, while still being important to the meal, don’t require immediate attention. And obviously, they make a great analogy for how life can be sometimes when things get hectic, and some things are simmering in the background. Rachel took some time to share things that are happening in the background for her family.

Brandy is working toward getting US citizenship. And it is a long, drawn-out process requiring mountains of paperwork. Before he can get citizenship, he needs an immigrant visa. To quote Rachel, “We’re always in the process of waiting for something concerning that. The embassy in Honduras has a very long wait for visas. The current wait for tourist visas is more than 800 days out! We don’t know yet what the wait is for the type of visa Brandy needs, but prayers are appreciated.”

Speaking of citizenship… It has been about five years since Nathan gained dual citizenship. Even though Rachel is a US citizen, the process was complicated because she hasn’t lived in the States as an adult. Nathan was able to get citizenship based on Trish’s and Allen’s citizenship. When Michael was born, Rachel started working on the citizenship process for him. But she soon discovered she was pregnant with Levi, so it seemed prudent to wait until the baby was born and make both applications at the same time. When Levi was born, the same thing happened, and she found she was pregnant with Charlotte. Well, now she is very hopeful that she will be able to apply for citizenship for Michael, Levi, and Charlotte at the same time! The process involves a lot of time, money, and extra stress but it is important to make sure that each of the children has dual citizenship.

With so much else going on, you may have forgotten about Rachel and Brandy’s construction of a new house on the ministry’s property. Having a home on the property is a matter of practicality. The office is there, and Rachel is a full-time working mother of four. Even with a nanny helping with the little ones, she needs to be able to see them throughout the day. 

When Rachel and Brandy first moved to Gracias, they knew their finances would change with Brandy leaving the military. They didn’t anticipate how much their needs would increase, though! Fundraising has been sitting on the back burner even as their family grew and grew. The cost for their diapers and milk alone is sizable! Rachel estimates that they are currently going through five giant boxes of diapers a month.

The added financial needs have been a big concern to Brandy, in particular. When they found out they were expecting sweet baby Charlotte, they kept it under wraps for a few months. They hadn’t even shared the big news with family when Kirstin told Rachel that Brandy looked more stressed out than usual! After praying about it, Brandy came to the realization that if God was going to send them four kids that He was going to have to provide for them.

Please pray that all these simmering things on the back burners will continue towards their completion. We trust in God, both in the big things and the little things. We will consider all the different stressors an exercise in "casting cares." If you feel led to be an instrument of God's provision, and committing to partnering with the Sowers Reyes family, you can click on this link. Thank you for your support!

- posted by Christi

KELSEA GOT OUT!

Since the middle of March, flights in and out of Honduras have been severely restricted. Relief flights were set up by the government for people to leave, if they wished to do so, and to allow citizens or legal residents to fly in. For the most part, this has worked reasonably well. 

The Sowers family made the decision to stay put, but for various reasons many missionaries have made the decision to travel. Since the restrictions began, most people reentering the country signed a document promising to quarantine in their own homes for 14 days. This is what the Hall family of Manna 4 Lempira did when they returned from their trip to the States. 

People being deported back to Honduras from other countries do not have the option of spending time quarantined at home. Many people are being returned to Honduras and those deportees are being placed in quarantine camps for 14 days, before being released to go to their own homes. This has been going on since late March. 

Kelsea was planning a trip back to her home in the State of Washington. (Please hum “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as you read the following lines.) All her bags were packed. She was ready to go. Russell drove her to the airport to catch her scheduled flight on May 17th. Alas, she never left on a jet plane! Her flight was cancelled.

Since the Sowerses don’t live close to the airport, Kelsea stayed with their daughter Rachel, who does live near the airport, to try to catch the next scheduled flight. The next flight was scheduled for May 21st. That flight was also canceled. Kelsea’s next chance for a flight out was going to be on May 25th. If that flight didn’t take off, Kelsea would need to wait another week, until Russell’s next designated travel day, when he could come and drive her back to Gracias. She chose to have Russell pick her up on Monday the 25th. Aaaand… All the flights scheduled that week after Kelsea returned to Gracias did depart. Oh, well. 

Kelsea waited for a week at Russell’s house before deciding to try and travel again. She booked a flight leaving Honduras on June 1st, but it was canceled last minute due to tropical storm Amanda. The next available flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until the week after on June 9th, so Rachel graciously opened up her home again, so that Kelsea would have a place to stay and Russell wouldn’t need to make another airport run. Finally, after a total of 3 weeks and 4 cancelled flights, Kelsea was able to make it to the States! You know what they say, 5th time’s the charm!  

Right as Kelsea was preparing to travel, there was a government announcement regarding flights into Honduras, which caused quite an uproar amongst the missionaries. It was announced that everyone who flies into Honduras would have to go to the quarantine camps for two weeks - no exceptions. The level of privacy and safety in the camps, as well as the lack of ability to social distance, made this a rather horrifying proposal to the missionary families that were considering traveling! Oddly enough, the government has not actually followed this new rule, and missionaries are continuing to fly into Honduras without having to quarantine in the camps.

Photos of the quarantine camps:

So, in spite of difficulties and concerns, Kelsea has safely returned to her family for now. Meanwhile, Sowers daughter Kirstin is still waiting for the rules to change so that she can fly down to join the ministry. Currently, incoming flights are only available to Honduran citizens and individuals with legal residency, neither of which applies to Kirstin. She was planning to join the ministry, and live in Honduras full time, starting in May. Now we’re hoping for July . . . or August . . . or who knows when?

 - posted by Christi

Putting Russell in the Driver's Seat

Russell, with Steve Spanos, at the beach on the Atlantic
side of Florida . . . in the morning, I'm guessing, based
on the glare of sunlight from behind them, LOL

Getting a driver's license is a rite of passage. For Russell - who's been driving in Honduras with a Honduran license for twelve years - getting licensed to drive in the U.S. meant flying to Sarasota Florida and spending some quality time at the DMV. He scheduled a ten-day trip to Sarasota just in case the process took more than a couple of days. However, overachiever that he is, Russell passed his written test on his first full day there (Monday the 13th), and passed his road test on the very next day!

Don’t worry. The rest of the trip will be put to good use. Russell will spend the remainder of the trip meeting with supporters and spending time with family.

In case you’re wondering what prompted Russell to get his first U.S. driver license, this is in preparation for the next backpack collection trip. The trip keeps getting bigger every year and Allen and Trish are delighted to have Russell joining forces with them this year. Having Russell join them for some of the driving and heavy lifting will literally lighten their load. Russell will travel with Allen during the first portion of the trip, and then he'll return to Honduras and Trish will join Allen for the remainder of the trip. This will also be useful in the long term because, eventually, Russell will be doing more of the traveling and fundraising in the States.

Trish had some funny observations about Russell taking a driver’s test. He is, of course, a fabulous driver--trained on the somewhat unpredictable road conditions in Honduras. Trish proclaimed him to be a very alert, safe driver, and said he's also the kind of driver who can easily back a trailer attached to a pickup into a tight spot.

However, Trish also pointed out that while the actual laws of the road are pretty similar between Honduras and the U.S., those laws often tend to be more like suggestions in Honduras. It has only been within the past few years that Honduras has gotten lines in their roads. It has always been perfectly acceptable to pass a car on a blind curve, as long as there’s enough room for three lanes of traffic. The things that would make most of us white-knuckle it are simply a part of regular life to Russell. Trish was praying that muscle memory wouldn’t kick in at any point while Russell was taking his road test.

Shifting Gears a Bit, to squeeze in some unrelated news:

Sowers4Pastors recently hosted a team from Discover Life Church in Melbourne, Florida. The small team did VBS programs at the Mercedes sponsorship center.

Last week, Sowers4Pastors had a very small team of people visiting, who sponsor kids through the Manna 4 Lempira program. The team members are visiting the different centers where they sponsor children, as well as visiting the homes of their sponsored children and meeting their families. This team is also having “fun days” where one of the Sowers’ crew members go out to collect children and their families to hang out with the sponsors at the swimming pool. That is a rare treat for them.

Kelsea is currently out of the country. Because of her work status, she has to go back to the U.S. every three months to meet the requirements of her Visa. She will be home soon, though. And there's no team on the ground this week. As Trish said, “Things are a little quiet right now, but the work hasn't stopped.”

In a last bit of exciting news, it’s raining most every day now! With the new water tank they built on the property, the Sowerses didn’t run out of water this year, before the rainy season arrived and filled the rivers back up! Allen said they probably even had a month’s supply of water left in the tank when the rains started. That is very good news.

- posted by Christi

Downtime, Sowers Style

For those of you who worry that the Sowers family never gets any downtime, you’ll be delighted to know that this past week they were lounging around sipping pineapple juice from glasses with little paper umbrellas in them. Hahaha! I crack myself up.

Really, they’re doing things like buying new tires and having their vehicles serviced while they have a momentary lull between teams. I’m pretty sure they don’t even own any little paper umbrellas. Seriously though, Russell and Iris did head to the beach in Tela Honduras for two days while the Hall family and Kelsea headed back to the States to renew their visas.

It is nice they have time to be sure the vehicles are in good working order. Trish and Allen joked that the mechanics love them. The official Sowers4Pastors vehicles are expected to go on roads few vehicles dare to travel. It is their goal to keep the vehicles dependable enough to drive gringos around when teams are in town.

While Russell and his family were traveling back and forth to the beach, they also made good use of the trip by stopping off to purchase the next batch of Sunday school curriculum for use in the sponsorship centers. Trish brought up an interesting point that it is difficult for those of us who have not visited those centers to understand what it’s really like.

Sunday school class in a village in the mountains

Up until very recently, the Sunday schools in most Honduran churches had no materials at all. Sunday school consisted of an untrained person with minimal education standing in front of kids with a Bible and possibly a storybook. There were no separate classrooms. Sunday school meant everyone from newborns to 18-yr-olds were hearing the exact same Bible lesson. That makes the flannelgraph lessons of my childhood look positively cutting edge!

The curriculum for sponsorship centers is revolutionizing Sunday school for many of the churches in the area. Pastors are starting to separate the children into different levels for classes. They can only do that when there are enough separate spaces and enough teachers to make that possible. That’s something the sponsorship centers have helped make possible.

RJ posing in front of the display of Honduras-specific Sunday School curriculum
at the store in San Pedro Sula

They are using a curriculum created by a Honduran for use in Honduras, which is way more revolutionary than it might sound. When North American curriculum is used, lessons invariably make cultural references the children do not understand. Something as simple as an object lesson involving playing baseball or missing the school bus must be explained to the children. This curriculum offers relatable object lessons for Honduran children--such as having a chicken walk through the house, or grinding the corn you grew, to make tortillas.

Each child receives his or her own consumable curriculum, specific to their age/grade level, which is a very big deal. Even at school, these children often do not have workbooks of their own. Now, they are able to study their lessons and color the pictures in their own books. And that is why Sowers4Pastors has already put in an order for a bunch more curriculum. Who needs little paper umbrellas when you have the satisfaction of changing lives?




 - posted by Christi

Nathan Doodle Dandy

The entire reason for Trish, Rachel, and Nathan’s trip to Florida was to finalize Nathan’s U.S. citizenship. The trip has been a smashing success! We can now stick a feather in his hat and call it macaroni because Nathan is officially a Yankee Doodle dandy, who possesses a magnificent flag waving ability.

Trish proclaimed the process was a little anticlimactic, which is really what you want in any process that involves the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Office. Trish credits Rachel’s mad skills as an organizer and planner for helping things go off without a hitch.

The trio had an appointment scheduled for 10:00 am. Their interviewer went through the mountain of paperwork Rachel had submitted, making sure everything was there and filled out correctly. Of course it was, because, as previously mentioned, Rachel is an organizer/planner extraordinaire. Meanwhile, Nathan held up his end of the bargain, by doing the task they assigned him--looking adorable. The interviewer asked Trish and Rachel questions, presumably to verify they were who they said they were. They were. Then the interviewer told them she would call them back in a couple of hours. The waiting was a little stressful because they were not told the paperwork had been approved.

It was also stressful because sippy cups and Cheerios are taboo at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Office. Trish, Rachel, and Nathan were able to leave for lunch, but then it was back to a waiting room where no food or drinks were allowed. A few hours is like seventeen days in toddler years! Nathan is past the stage of curling up in Mommy’s lap for a nap. He chose to pass the time by running around the room with Rachel in hot pursuit. At around 2:30, they were called back in and told that Nathan is a U.S. citizen.

For those of you wondering, this does not mean automatic citizenship for RJ, Abby, or any subsequent Honduran born grandchildren. They will lather, rinse, and repeat to obtain citizenship for other grandchildren.

Sneak peak of what will be available on the
website, once the big update goes public

Accomplishing what they set out to do has been the best part of the trip. Trish has also been able to see her Florida dwelling children, and her parents. The other part of the trip has not been nearly as much fun. Basically, Trish’s regular responsibilities followed her to Florida. For her, it has been work as usual.

2018 was Sowers4Pastors’ first year as an independent organization. Trish is feeling her way through the requirements for closing out a year. Stuff has to be done! Paperwork has to be sent out to employees and donors. The deadlines are NOW! Trish laughed and said, “This is not the stuff you become a missionary to do!”

She is also working to make a big update to the website. Currently, people who want to sponsor a child have to do it through the Manna 4 Lempira Facebook page. With an updated website, people will be able to look at photos of children and set up sponsorships there. Trish is shooting for having everything ready to go before the first of April.

In the meantime, let’s all look at the USA’s cutest new citizen.

For those of you seeing this post by email, here's a link where you can see Nathan's amazing flag waving abilities. https://www.facebook.com/rachel.sowers.50/videos/1837554079686503/

 - posted by Christi

So You Want To Be a Citizen, Blah, Blah, Blah

Trish is back on U.S. soil and she brought the world’s cutest carry-on bag with her. Well, actually, I’m not sure who carried Nathan. It could have been Rachel, his mother. But I do know that Trish, Rachel, and Nathan are all in Florida on what is surely the most official business of Nathan’s entire seventeen months of living! They are here seeking U.S. citizenship for Nathan. Unfortunately, his citizenship will not be based on his cuteness level, so his mom and Nana have come prepared.

If you’re ever in need of some bedtime reading, you can check out the U.S. Department of State’s web page for “Acquisition of U.S. Citizenship by a Child Born Abroad”. It’s a riveting read--compared with say, the phone book, or the list of ingredients on your shampoo bottle. If you’re interested in learning about Nathan’s particular situation, you can skip to the section titled, “Birth Abroad in Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen and an Alien”. In this case, it means that Rachel, a U.S. Citizen, married Brandy, a Honduran, and little Nathan was born in Honduras.

There’s a bunch of other stuff about year of birth, blah, blah, blah… But wait! Those “blah, blahs” are important because the rules vary from one case to the other. The “blah, blahs” clearly state that since Nathan was born on or after November 14, 1986, in order for Rachel’s citizenship to guarantee Nathan’s, she would have had to live in the U.S. for five years prior to Nathan’s birth. Whew. She did that. No problemo, right? Wrong. If you read further down in the “blah, blah’s,” you see that at least two of those years would have to have been when she was fourteen or older. And that is a problemo! Rachel has lived in Honduras since she was nine.

Fortunately, there are some more obscure “blah, blahs,” and that’s where Trish comes in. Trish, meeting all of the requirements, may be able to pass citizenship along to a child in her direct lineage. Now, it’s not an automatic thing, but it’s the best available option. So far, it has involved filling out a slew of forms and having Rachel and Brandy pay the required fees. The application was received by the embassy and now Nathan, Rachel, and Trish are there for an in-person interview at the U.S. embassy in Tampa. Nathan was granted a Visa so that he could make this trip.

Trish has no idea what questions will be asked, but they’ve already provided things like birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc… They also had to show documentation for each time Trish has entered or exited the U.S. over her lifetime. (That’s why Trish is a better candidate than Allen, the former missionary kid, who did much more international traveling as a child!)

Once Nathan’s citizenship is approved, Rachel will apply for his U.S. passport. At a later time, this process can be repeated for RJ and Abby to obtain citizenship. It should be a little easier since they’ve already gathered the necessary information on Trish.

While in the U.S., Rachel is going to be doing a little traveling to meet with supporters of her ministry and do fundraising. Since she grew up in Honduras, Rachel doesn’t have as many U.S. connections as Allen and Trish. Obtaining citizenship for Nathan will allow her to make future trips to visit churches and share her ministry with interested people. Trish will be visiting relatives, doing a little chauffeuring for Rachel (who doesn’t have a U.S. driver’s license), and doing her regular work over the internet.

The embassy interview is January 9th. Prayers are appreciated!

 - posted by Christi

A taste of MK camp!

My campers are back home again, and recuperating from their action-packed week of camp and the grueling bus ride back home.

A camp for missionary kids needs to have lots of action and adventure, as many of these kids experience much excitement in their day-to-day lives. Below is a video compilation of scenes from the 2012 Honduras MK Camp. Make sure to watch the part where the kids are bungy jumping amongst trees - my kids said, "It's amazing only a few kids ran into trees." Hmmm. That's the kind of thing that warms a mom's heart.

If you want to see my kids specifically, Boo and Rachel show up well at 8:02. To see Gus, just watch for the big kid with the scruffy beard! Ben didn't attend camp this year - he stayed home and spent the week with Kirstin.



Thanks to all those who help make this camp happen!

Mail Call!

We don't receive much mail - maybe one or two items a year. If you wanted to send a letter through the postal service directly to us here in Honduras (we don't recommend sending packages this way), you'd just write our name, the name of our nearest city (Gracias Lempira), and the country name on the envelope . Hopefully the letter would arrive in the Gracias post office. After that, the letter would sit in the post office until some friend of ours picked it up and brought it to us. Since we rarely get mail, we don't go checking in at the post office very often (or ever, really).

Recently we received information packets for voting by mail in the next US election. These packets were mailed to Gracias, and then brought to us by the young men who regularly do farm work for us on our property. So you see, the system really does (occasionally) work. Actually, Allen didn't receive a packet, and he's registered to vote as well, so we're not talking about a 100% success rate.

Another way people sometimes get mail to us is by sending it to the Missionary Ventures main office in Orlando Florida. We have a mailbox there, and when anyone from the office visits us they'll bring us our mail, or when we visit Orlando we can pick it up.

Allen recently returned from a trip to the states, and he brought some mail back with him. We were delighted to receive some Christmas cards and letters from friends - in fact, several years worth!

Henry Z, we laughed through three years of your witty Christmas letters at one sitting (2008-2010)!

B family, formerly of Costa Rica, it was so kind of you to send us a housewarming gift along with your Christmas card in 2009! I'm guessing your little guy is quite a bit bigger now.





I can't wait to see what people are sending us this Christmas . . . but I guess I'll just have to.

A "Chance" Encounter

Well I had some fun this morning! In order to understand this story, and the odds against it happening, you'll need a bit of context. You'll need to know that I'm the ultimate homebody. I really just love staying around my home. I do head into town once a week for groceries, but then I head right back home again - no hanging around in town for me.

Today I had to run some errands - things that absolutely had to happen today - and I didn't have a car. Our friend Kevin, of the Goodwin family of missionaries, was very gracious about driving out to pick me up and take me into town, and then driving me all the way back home a few hours later.

So, I was afoot in town, for really probably the first time since I started driving last year. It was nice. I think I'd forgotten how pleasant it is to walk about in town. I'm not likely to drive in just for that, but I did enjoy it today.

I made a stop at a little restaurant that sells rotissarie chicken, to pick up a rare treat to take home with me, and I ran into a visiting couple, Sonny and Kay, from Texas. We started into the regular conversation we tend to have with visitors (it's almost always interesting to find out how and why someone has wandered into this out-of-the-way corner of the world), when they asked me my name. After I told them my name, they excitedly explained that they'd been trying to contact me. Turns out they're regular readers of this blog! I'm not sure why I haven't received their emails, and they didn't have my phone number, but I just happened by where they were having lunch, and so we met!

We had such fun, exchanging stories! I immediately abandoned Christopher (he was at home, expecting me to come straight back with bread, so he could make sandwiches for the guys who work for us on our property - I told him to make up some boxed mac and cheese instead), and I settled in for some serious chatting! Sonny and Kay are actually living on a sailboat, and right now their boat is docked in La Ceiba while they jaunt about in the mountains for a bit. We used to meet up with sailboaters when we lived on Guanaja, but it's pretty uncommon to bump into them up here in Gracias! They have a blog of their own, which I've just had a chance to check out a bit - it looks like a fun read, with lots of lovely pictures. They keep it updated, so they already have pictures up from Gracias and the surrounding area. This page has the most recent entries. I'll be keeping an eye on it, to see if they write something about me, LOL.

Eventually I did have to finish my errands and head home, but I'm thinking we'll have to make sure to spend some more time with these folks before they return to the ocean - they're great people.

Oh, and did we have cameras there? Yes I'm pretty sure we did. Did we think to take pictures of our fun encounter? Ummmm, well, ummmmm. Maybe we'll do better next time we meet up.

Kirstin's double life

My oldest daughter, Kirstin, is 23. Currently she works in the paint department at Home Depot, takes - and pays for - and ACES - college classes, and lives with her grandparents in Sarasota. This fall she'll take EMT training, so that she can get a better job (and also because she believes she'll enjoy the work), and then she hopes to move out on her own while continuing to pay for college as she goes through, without taking out any loans. This is Kirstin's normal life. Busy, but not all that interesting or unusual.

For a month, though, she came home to Honduras. She drove the Land Cruiser across rough mountain roads. She hiked and swam on our property, had to skirt hormonal bulls to get from her room to our main house, participated in an after-dark hunt through the woods for a turkey the dogs had chased off, administered medical care to the turkey, helped rig up a more secure turkey enclosure, learned how to work our tricky washing machine (this involves knowing what time of day we can get hot water off the roof, turning the water on and off at the pipe instead of the machine, and using the kitchen timer so as to avoid running water onto the floor), and enjoyed many other aspects of the less-than-normal side of her life that she lives in Honduras.

This morning Kirstin left for her return trip to Florida. She had a couple of stops to make locally, before heading to the airport, including stopping in at Russell's house to say goodbye to the part of the family that is in town working on the Pastor Training School today. She was also dropping off a turkey at a friend's house along the way. The last thing she did here, before leaving, was to examine the turkey for wounds, wrap it in a towel for travel, and carry it to the car.

I think it is just so fitting that we sent Kirstin off holding a live turkey on her lap. It was like we kept her living the odd, fun, never-know-what'll-happen-next Honduran part of her life until the last possible second until she had to go back to that dull life she leads in the US.

Bye Kirstin - we miss you!

We're official residents (again)!

Monday morning we all went to San Pedro Sula, and completed the process to have official residency again. The process went fairly smoothly, and now we're good for four years, because we were able to pay the annual renewal fees all at once.

After the work was finished at the immigration office, Russell and Iris headed to the lawyer's office, to begin the legal process involved in a marriage between a Honduran and a US citizen. There's a bunch of paperwork to be gathered for this.

Now that we're home, some of us seem to be sharing a nasty head cold. Like we needed that! Bethany is cooking us up a big pot of chicken soup right now, so hopefully we'll knock those germs out of our systems!

Hurrah - a four year residency!

Some of you may remember, back in December, when our family had to run to Tegucigalpa and then to Belize, to straighten out some problems with our residency. I started writing out the story in detail on the blog, and it got so long that I only ended up posting about the first few days of the adventure. (If anyone still cares, let me know, and I'll post the rest of that story - I got distracted at the time because we were moving, and then we lost internet for a bit, etc.)

Anyway, we just got word that our new residency has been approved! It will be good for four years, which is wonderful. Thanks so much, to those of you who pray for us about things like this - we appreciate it!