I recently picked up this plaque with a really cute quote on it and many will say is very appropriate for me. “One shoe can change your life” ~ Cinderella. I am a self-confessed lover of shoes. I don’t know when this all happened, I used to believe in one good pair of sensible black pumps… it must be age. 😉 Someone was teasing me when they found out I bought this sign, “it says ONE shoe – not 100”. I quickly replied with a grin, “I just haven’t found “the one” yet!”.

It’s true though, I have too many pairs of shoes. Some of which I have never worn but thought I would when I saw them on sale in the store. SALE is a word from the Lord you know! 😉 I call it being a Proverbs 31 woman but I digress.

I found myself thinking about the shoe drive we are starting at our church. We’ll be bringing over to Africa with us next summer, suitcases full of shoes for the clothing drive at Victory Faith Church (changed later to Red. Point Church). A church I spent working with for a week this past summer. I’ve been trying to come up with a cleaver slogan, something to catch people’s attention and help them give. (We’re looking for running shoes and sandals in new or next to new condition.)
Then I remembered a picture I took while at an orphanage run by an elderly Grandmother in The Valley of 1,000 Hills. This little girl wasn’t wearing any shoes while she played in the red, clay dirt – in a yard that was littered with garbage and glass (which we cleaned up). While we were busy painting (and making a mess of it all over the ground in some places), she walked through the paint a few times. By the end of the day, I noticed the bottoms of her feet were hard, and had been coloured with red clay and green paint.

One shoe could actually change her life!

It’s for kids like her that we’re starting this project and for the adults that I saw walking barefoot over 5 klm each way to work. It’s for those elderly women who come into VFC to buy a bag of clothing (for just over $3) so that they can resell it in their community to make somewhere around $40 a month to live off of so that they can support their orphaned grand children and great-grand children all the while saving enough to be able to buy another bag of clothing the next month. I know we can make a difference in someone else’s life by giving something as simple as a pair of shoes!

Next summer we will be participating in far more than just this, we plan on feeding families, praying for the sick and making a difference where ever we can.

Won’t you join us?!