Pastors across the Dakotas Conference are receiving calls from Solar Oven Partners. They’re being invited to offer folks the opportunity to give or get an Alternative Gift—a solar oven delivered with personal training by a mission team to a family in the Dominican Republic.

Photo: Photo courtesy of Solar Oven Partners. The December 1-10 Solar Oven Partners team will travel to the Dominican Republic sporting hats and shirts with our new logo.  The United Methodist cross and flame celebrates SOP’s partnership with UM Global Ministries and the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana. 

Delivered as a bulletin insert, a handout, a posting on their church website, or as an item in a print newsletter, our new Solar Oven Partners Alternative Gift options brochure gives United Methodists and friends a way to give a gift that really matters.

Many of us have all that we want and more. Dozens of you have told your families that you’d like the gift of a solar oven or part of an oven to be given in your honor. We hope you’ll do that again this year.

Many of our friends and family have all they need and more. Last year being able to help others with a gift that keeps on giving honored them. We hope you’ll continue that tradition or start a new one this year.

New doors have opened for Solar Oven Partners as 1000 ovens have arrived in the Dominican Republic .  In partnership with UM Missionaries and fellow Dakotans Gordon and Ardell Graner, a second SOP Volunteers-in-Mission team will serve in the Dominican December 1-10.  They will assemble ovens and teach solar cooking.

Photo: Photo courtesy of Solar Oven Partners. SOP Director Rick and Gene Bethke, SOP board member and bread pan manufacturer, examine the newly-designed bread pan with smooth edges. Components for solar ovens continue to be modified for improvements.

The enthusiastic demand for ovens in the Dominican means there will be more teams traveling and more ovens shipped in 2016. To do this, we continue to need sustainable funding.

A $50 gift delivers training and shipping; $100 provides the components of a solar oven; $150 puts an oven into the hands of a Dominican family plus mandatory training that builds a sense of ownership and investment—you get the idea!

What can YOU do? Download a brochure with information on how to give or get this beautiful Alternative Gift option.  Ask your Pastor how you can help get the word out about this opportunity to groups in your church.

Join Solar Oven Partners in prayer for this wonderful new opportunity to change the lives of very poor people in the Dominican Republic.