Education to help build a future . . . backpacks and school supplies to help ensure an education!

Backpack Project

When Sowers4Pastors goes shopping, it looks a little different than when you or I go shopping. It’s not that I don’t love a good bargain and buying in bulk. Ask anyone at my local Costco about my purchase history and they can tell you how much I love my five pound blocks of cream cheese and jars of organic salsa. But even I have never purchased 4500 backpacks! Allen and Trish recently did just that.

Don’t worry. They are not going to be on an episode of “Hoarders”. The Sowers are gearing up for a backpack project that would give Dora the Explorer something to sing about! Their goal is to get a total of about 5000 backpacks into the hands of children who go to the feeding centers. Of course, empty backpacks aren’t going to have much impact. That’s where you come in.

Filling Needs, One Backpack at a Time

You have an opportunity to fill a backpack with school supplies for a child in Western Honduras. If you’re thinking some basic items like crayons, pencils, pens, erasers, and notebooks won’t have much impact on a child’s life, think again. This is exactly the kind of practical support these kids need.

Allen would like you to contemplate what people need to get ahead in life. In addition to a relationship with God, people benefit from having their basic needs met. The feeding centers are already operating to provide nutritious food and some basic medical care. Surely, one of the next needs is that of an education. But how can a child receive an education without simple things like paper and pencils?

This project started out as a way for U.S. churches involved in the Sister Church Program, and individuals involved with Manna 4 Lempira to connect with the children they are sponsoring. It’s a way for them to provide meaningful support to the Honduran kids they sponsor. Then Allen thought, “Why should those folks have all the fun?”

Who Can Fill a Backpack?

• 

  Are you involved in the Sister Church Program? If so, you can fill a backpack! The sister churches are already hard at work filling backpacks.

• Are you not involved in the Sister Church Program, but you do sponsor a child through Manna 4 Lempira? If so, you can fill a backpack! There are backpacks available for people who are sponsoring a child and would love to help their sponsored child (and others!) to school with necessary supplies.

• Are you not involved in the Sister Church Program, and you don’t sponsor a child? If so, you can fill a backpack! There are backpacks available for people who aren’t ready to make a yearlong commitment to the sponsor a child, but would love to help send a child or children to school with necessary supplies.

• 

  Do you have a pulse? If so, you can fill a backpack! Yes, there are backpacks available for people with pulses who would love to help send a child or children to school with necessary supplies.

• Would your entire church, Sunday school class, or children’s department like to participate in a project where you know exactly where your items are going? If so, you can all fill backpacks! Maybe you already fill shoeboxes in the fall. That’s great! You can fill backpacks in the summer! If your church is interested, send Allen an email and he will happily supply the backpacks. He says he can get a hundred or more backpacks in your hands within two weeks time! Currently, churches in Columbus, Oh, Edgewater, FL, Walkersville, MD, Jacksonville, FL, and Atlanta, GA are having drives to fill backpacks.

Fill as many as you can while the back-to-school sales have items marked down to ridiculously low prices. Really. When crayons are going for $0.25 a box, can you really afford not to buy a bunch? Plus, since not every child has a sponsor, filling additional backpacks will allow EVERY child at the feeding centers to receive school supplies. Last year, the Sowers purchased enough supplies to fill the deficit because they refuse for there to be a scenario in which only some children receive a gift while others look on longingly.

If you would like to participate, but would rather have someone else do the shopping, that’s fine, too. You can earmark donations and Allen will do some bargain hunting on his next visit to the states. Sowers4Pastors will also be providing a pair of leather school shoes for each child, but they will do the shopping for that, due to the need to order specific sizes. They are able to buy shoes for $13 a pair. Any donations will be most welcome.

Who Can Not Fill a Backpack?

• N/A

How to Get Them From Here to There

Allen will be making a trip to the U.S. and will be in Florida, Atlanta, GA, Maryland, Columbus, OH, and the Pittsburgh, PA area. He will happily pick up completed backpacks or school supplies, which have been sorted into Ziplock bags and are ready to be transferred to the backpacks.

If your group is worried about how to get the supplies to their final destination, send Allen an email (allen @ sowers4pastors.com). He will figure out a way to get them from you!

- posted by Christi

There Were Never Such Devoted Sister Churches

“Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters…” Irving Berlin may have written those words for “White Christmas,” but they’re even more fitting for Sowers 4 Pastors’ Sister Church Sponsorship Program than they were for Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. In case you’re not familiar with the program, let’s go over the basics.

The Basics

The Sister Church Sponsorship Program goes hand in hand with the Manna 4 Lempira Child Sponsorship Program. You already know how Manna 4 Lempira allows individuals to sponsor a child for $15 a month. The Sister Church program is just like that, with individuals sponsoring specific children - except on steroids!

The Basics on Steroids

The program came about when someone at a church in the U.S. said something like, “Hey! I’m sponsoring children. Why don’t we ALL (in our church) sponsor children who go to the same church feeding center in Western Honduras? Then the people of our church could feed ALL the children at a particular feeding center!” The idea was thrown to Allen, who had the good sense to say, “YES! FEED ALL THE CHILDREN!!! You will be like sister churches without the sibling rivalry! And no one will be screaming, ‘Daaaad, she’s looking at me! Make her stop looking at me!’”  (Note: Okay, so those may not have been their exact words, but work with me here. I’m pretty sure it conveys the general idea.)

Sisterly Love in Guacutao

This week, Russell and a team went to the village of Guacutao to help out at a Honduran sister church. (Just fyi: Allen refers to Guacutao as "The Dark Side of the Moon." I'm not sure if that's because it's hard to get there, or if he has trouble with the name.) The work they did was very similar to the work the team with Manna 4 Lempira did last week, only this time all of the children being registered will be sponsored by their U.S. sister church; Edgewater Alliance Church, in Edgewater, Florida.

Family Reunion Minus the Jello Salad

In January, a sister church from the states is planning to send a team to Honduras. It will be like a big ol’ sister church family reunion, minus the Jello salad! Well, actually, it will really be more like a VBS, since that’s what the team is going to do for their sponsored church. Can you imagine how much fun it will be for all concerned?

That’s part of the beauty of the Sister Church Sponsorship Program. When a church from the U.S. is able to send a team to visit their sister church, the team is able to further develop a relationship by working on a project, such as VBS, putting a new roof on a church, or, as you’ve seen in the past, even building a bridge!

You Don’t Have to Be a Sister Church to Pack a Backpack!

Going out on a limb, I’m going to guess I’m not the only person whose heart goes pitter-pat at the sight of Back to School Sales. My kids are grown and we rarely have need of crayons in the house, but when I see boxes of crayons on sale for a quarter, I want to load up my shopping cart with a bounty of colorful, pointy-tipped, boxes of paraffin wax art implements! Similar feelings sweep over me at the sight of discounted pens, pencils, composition books, and those glorious pink erasers!

Sadly, in talking to Allen, I learned Hondurans do not know the joy of giant sale displays heaped with school supplies. Not only that, I also learned school supplies in Honduras often cost as much as five times the amount charged by places like Target and Walmart. Say what? Considering how small the typical Honduran family’s annual income is, purchasing necessary school supplies is an unfortunate burden. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

You don’t have to be a part of the Sister Church Sponsorship Program in order to fill a backpack (Or 2! Or 20!) with school supplies for a child in Western Honduras. You don’t even have to sponsor a child. ANYONE with a love of crayons can fill a backpack. Actually, you don’t even have to love crayons. (Though, why wouldn’t you?) ANYONE can fill a backpack! Absolutely ANYONE! Your backpack will be given to a child through one of Sowers4Pastors’ feeding centers.

Many people think of sending gifts to children in other countries as strictly something to do at Christmas, but that’s not the case. Think of how many more backpacks we can fill if we hit those Back to School Sales! There are children in Honduras who are unable to attend school because their families cannot afford to purchase the required supplies - and we can make it possible for these kids to get an education! That’s a lot of mileage from some pencils, pens, paper, and crayons! More information on how YOU can take part in the backpack project will be coming in the next post. Watch for it!

- posted by Christi

Volunteers Head for the Hills

Kim and Jonathan Hall, and family
(this photo was NOT taken in Honduras)

Visiting teams to Western Honduras are always met with enthusiasm from the Sowers family. When a visiting team contains Kim Hall, who spearheads the Manna 4 Lempira program, and her husband, Jonathan, the enthusiasm is kicked up a notch.

Last week Kim and Jonathan, along with their children, and a group of other child sponsors headed for the hills. Well, they headed for the mountains of Western Honduras!

Manna 4 Lempira Refresher Course

With the Manna 4 Lempira program, individuals can sponsor children through one of the feeding centers supported by Sowers 4 Pastors. One sponsorship is only $15 a month, and it provides two nutritious meals per week, bi-annual deworming medicine, a pair of school shoes and a backpack filled with necessary school supplies at the start of each school year, and correspondence between the children and their sponsors.

Because Sowers 4 Pastors and Manna 4 Lempira operate on the up and up, they want you to know the $15 will not ALL go to provide for your sponsored child. The EXTRA money goes to feed as many as SIXTY other children each month! How is that possible? It is possible because of the Halls’ tireless volunteer efforts, and the Sowers’ almost miraculous ability to stretch a penny like it’s a worn out piece of elastic.

Home Visit, Sweet Home Visit

Team Hall was able to do “home visits” to a lot of the sponsored kids. In order to do that, they also got to schlep for hours in the mountains of Lempira, boldly going where no vehicle has gone before (at least not easily). Of course, the Halls are no strangers to Honduras and its scenic foot tours, and this group of sponsors would have crossed any obstacle for an opportunity to spend time with the children.

What’s Up, Doc?

The medical station - physician's assistant with patient in front,
computerized record keeping happening to the right, translator to
the left, and doctor seeing another patient beyond the desk

The group brought along a doctor, who provided check-ups and medical supplies to the kids at the Mercedes and Betania centers. Kids from surrounding smaller satellite feeding centers came in, as well. For children who might otherwise never get to see a doctor, such checkups are invaluable! (See the previous line about the bi-annual deworming medicine. After you finish saying, “Eeew,” you might want to think about how you can support this ministry!)

 

Roll Call

 

 This bunch of motivated volunteers registered additional children at the Mercedes and Betania centers. All of the children (both newly registered and previously sponsored) were weighed, measured for height and for shoe size, given a brief medical exam and a bag of goodies, photographed, and fed. Children who received personal gifts from their sponsors were photographed with the gifts, so the sponsors know their gifts made it to their child. These hard workers also cleaned up the rolls by removing children who have either moved or aged out of the program.

 

Looking to the Future

Even though the two Manna 4 Lempira programs (Mercedes and Betania) are growing by leaps and bounds, Kim and Jonathan are NOT about to rest on their volunteer laurels. They are working on opening a 3rd Manna 4 Lempira location! The El Tablon program is still in the planning phase, but the group was able to visit the area to take some photos and make some plans. Kim has also added another volunteer in the US, Amanda Lane, to help with all of the paperwork involved.

If you haven’t already, please consider becoming a Manna 4 Lempira sponsor. For $15 a month, you will be able to touch dozens of lives. And you won’t even have to hike through the mountains for hours in order to do it! Just click here, to get started!

- posted by Christi

Guancascos

Pastors’ Training School: The Body of Christ in Action

The average Honduran pastor in Pastors’ Training School makes around $7.00 per day (and since much of their work is seasonal, not year-around, they make about $800 per year). It’s not enough to keep some of us in Starbucks! Even by the typical Honduran standard of living, (which does not include a mocha-frappa-whatchamacallit-cino and a muffin the size of your head) that’s not enough income to pay for continuing education. That’s where we come in. We can partner with Sowers 4 Pastors to pay for the cost of training these hardworking men of God.

Allen is quick to point out he has a degree in business administration/systems, not a religious studies degree. That’s why, for the past ten years, Sowers 4 Pastors has handled the majority of the fundraising and business-y matters, such as being sure the school is staffed with a qualified teacher. Over the years, there have been multiple teachers--usually seminary trained Honduran pastors or visiting pastors from the US. Currently, fellow gringo, Clay Powell, is doing a great job of handling the education aspects in his first year with Pastor’s Training School. Hmm… That sounds a lot like the body of Christ in action!

Not Your Typical Seminary

While the study is intense, this isn’t quite like an American seminary. For starters, most of the pastors have an elementary school education. A few are illiterate and require volunteers to sit with them to read lessons and transcribe their notes, so they will be able to review them with someone at home.

The pastors do not all share the same denomination. This session nine denominations are represented, which makes for lively discussions. What they are learning is that the Bible is the final authority. They may have been taught nine different things about a particular topic, but we’re interested in what God has to say about it.

An Analogy Too Good to Pass Up

Most of the pastors are field workers in the agricultural sense--working grueling hours for the aforementioned $7 a day. They are also field workers in the “Sunday school answer” sort of way! As Luke 10:2 says:

He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

These men are willing to spend time harvesting God’s fields of Western Honduras. You can help.

Better Than a Mocha-Frappa-Whatchamacallit-Cino

$250 covers the cost of training one pastor 3 days per month for a 9-month school year. Here’s where the money goes:

• Lodging (for the time at school)
• Rent for use of facilities
• Food (for the time at school)
• Curriculum
• Support staff, such as cooks and housekeepers
• Transportation to the training center
• Study Bible
• Bible Dictionary

If you ask me, that’s more exciting than a million muffins the size of your head!

- posted by Christi

If you're interested in more info on the Pastors' Training School, and would like more info on how to donate, follow this link.  Thanks so much for your help!

Missionary Kids Retreat - Hear Their Voices! (Part 3)

MK Retreat, Part 3

When Allen asked me to speak to several MK teenagers on the phone and ask them some questions, I thought they might not want to open up and share. I needn’t have worried! It was a privilege to spend an afternoon talking to some of the world’s most mature teens. While they are definitely unique individuals, there were a few recurring themes. I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoyed speaking to them.

Gunmen, Gringos, and a Plan for the Future

Elisa--Age 14

Elisa and her family moved to Honduras from their native Canada, three years ago. She attends a private school, and, unlike some of the other MKs, she has the opportunity to get together with other gringos her age because she attends an English church. She has only visited Canada once since going to Honduras, although she and her family will be going back for a wedding, this year.

When asked about her wildest experience as an MK, Elisa came through with a lulu! She explained that her family is friendly with some of the milder gangs because they offer protection against the more notorious gangs. She said, “One time, we were up in the mountains helping out and serving the kids. A friendly gang member came up and told us to, ‘GO!’ because a bad gang was coming our way.” Of course, they left immediately, but not without spotting five men approaching with guns. While Elisa and her family made it out safely, three other people were shot that day.

Elisa has big plans for the future. She would like to get a degree in missions and go to Republic of Congo to work with children.

She wants people to understand that MKs are not perfect Christians. They’re just people. They are, however, people who love getting together at MK Retreat! She spoke about the acceptance they feel there. She stated, “We don’t care what people look like or what they do. We feel like family… MK Retreat has changed my life. It’s amazing to see missionaries come together.”

Final Retreat. Next Stop, College.

Emma--Age 18

Emma has been in Honduras for ten years. She estimates that her family has served in seven different locations, within the country. Emma used an online homeschooling program and will be leaving for college in the states in August. While she’s excited about the future, she’s sad at the thought that her years at MK Retreat and MK Camp have come to an end. She’s not sure what she will do in the future, but she loves working with people.

Emma shared a cool missionary story with me. She said, “We’ve had several people live with us. We had a girl who had never had a language because she was deaf and her parents were abusive. She was 16 and she had no way to communicate. Where we lived happened to be near one of the only Spanish sign language missionaries in Honduras. The girl learned sign language and gained a community. She would have ended up a beggar. Now, she works selling jewelry and sewing. It’s proof that God cares and He wants us to do something with our lives.”

Even though she lives near other missionaries, their schedules do not allow for them to get together frequently. That’s one reason MK Retreat and MK Camp have been so important to her. She said, “MKs are spread out. It can be really hard to find a Christian community. There’s something amazing that happens when a bunch of missionary kids come together. They know that they’re home, in a way. You’re with people who understand. The counselors are always right there. They love us. It feels like a family.”

She wants people to know MKs aren’t perfect. Hmmm… That sounds familiar! She continued the thought by saying, “A lot of people think we’re on a pedestal and that we’re closer to God. We may seem weird. We don’t fit anywhere. We don’t fit in the states. We don’t fit in Honduras. We’re somewhere in between. The only people who understand are missionary kids.”

¿Como Se Dice “Mushrooms” en Español?

Abby--Age 15

Abby was in the 6th grade when her family moved to Honduras. Prior to that, she attended public school in the states. Since moving, Abby has been homeschooled. She’s fortunate to be able to see gringos around her age on a regular basis.

She thinks the funniest part of being an MK is always messing up her Spanish. She’s not the only member of her family whose Spanish could use some help. Once her father ordered some delicious looking mushrooms for them in a restaurant. They were very surprised when their mushrooms turned out to be livers! ¡No es bueno! (And that concludes my personal mastery of the Spanish language!)

Abby gets to visit the U.S. every other year, for a two month period. After high school, she wants to spend a year in Africa, in order to experience other missions. Then, she plans to attend college in the states, where she will study to become a dentist. She doesn’t think she will become a missionary, but she’s open to God’s calling.

MK Retreat and MK Camp is a time for Abby to get away from family and do her own thing. She said, “As missionary kids, you don’t get a lot of time alone. You’re always with someone. This is a time that’s about you. It’s meant for you. Usually things are for the mission.”

She wants people to know… (Wait for it!) “We’re normal. We’re just kids. Normal kids with different experiences. We’re not super Christians or anything like that.”

To Be Continued… Again! Stay tuned for more MK Retreat insights. Go to Part 1 and Part 2 for more MK Retreat Interviews!

- posted by Christi