As we continue to advocate for the orphan and the least of these, check out our weekend!
My girlfriends that co-founded Joint Heirs Adoption Ministry(JHAM) and I sat at our local shoe store on the main street in our little podunk town Saturday (in the pouring rain!) and collected over 650 pairs of shoes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AWESOME is the only word I can think of to describe our day.
We partnered with Soles4Souls who provided collection boxes and flyers to distribute for our 'cause'. They are awesome to work with! The Girl Scouts in your community can become involved to earn merit badges. (we only had one girl scout show up but it was encouraging and fun to remind her she will be the ONLY girl scout in our area with one of the S4S's badges! :) The local shoe store, Brown's Shoe Fit, is a participating business with S4S, and gave each person that donated shoes on Saturday a coupon for $20 off a new pair of shoes! Pretty awesome!
We got our schools involved and the kids at my son's school started collected two weeks prior to the drive. They donated two full boxes of shoes!
Then we also had the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) collect shoes at the middle school and high school in our local town (my kids go to a country school so the pics you see above is the entire 8th grade class my son is in! lol)
It was so much fun to work with the girls all day and we banded shoes together from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. Yes, every single pair of those 650+ shoes had to be rubber banded together. But it was interesting to see just what kind of shoes we got!
Yes, shoes of all kinds!!! These had never been worn!!!! (I'm thinkin' that's a good thing!) lol We figured they might have been bowling shoes. It was hard to think of how many hundreds of dollars people spend on shoes...... that they never wear. We had so many people bring shoes that still had tags on them, new soles or were still in boxes. We as American's are so very spoiled (some are blessed....that's a better word huh?) and don't even know it. As we banded all those shoes together we thought of where they might end up. China, Africa, Haiti, Chile, even our own inner city hospitals in Kansas City. I wonder where they will walk next. Knowing my shoes have seen the sandy beaches of Hawaii and now they may walk on the rocky ground of Haiti. One day seeing the sun and having fun, the next day comforting and protecting the feet of a mother who walks miles to bring her child fresh water.
Now that's humbling.
Joy and some of the shoes that people had in boxes. yep, some people actually save the boxes their shoes come in! lol (not me)
Now THOSE are some LOUD shoes! ;)
So.... we made a decision yesterday. We are responsible for shipping ALL those shoes to a S4S's warehouse where they will be distributed. Can you imagine the shipping cost of over 650 pairs of shoes?! Staggering! We are going on a road trip! The girls and I decided we are driving the shoes to the main warehouse in Tennessee! Now, that's going to make for some awesome bloggin' and pictures! Stay tuned, in the next couple of weeks we're heading out with all those shoes! Who knows.... we may stop in to say hi to some of you bloggy friends!
That's little Miss Jia (Joy's daughter from China that she brought home forever last summer), the kids were all a big help actually and it was fun to have them around to 'encourage people to stop and share their shoes with us!
Two of Melinda's cuties! Acel & Meah. Meah came home forever from China last year too! I can't tell you how great it feels to work with these girls and do what we do. Advocating for the orphan and the least of these. And seeing our kids get involved with us is even more of a blessing!
Me, Melinda & Joy
Joy's mom is always our little angel in disguise too and she was kind enough to buy us all lunch. Pizza in the trailer (you didn't expect us to sit in the rain all day did you? ;) Joy's hubby has a racing trailer that we were able to conduct our shoe drive out of.... nice and dry). Thanks for the Pizza Mellanie! But thanks even more for the shoes! :)
Hopefully, we have prevented a lot less of this...
and a lot more of this....
Maybe someday the girls and I can go on one of their distribution trips ourselves and help put all those new shoes on people's feet....
“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”
Hebrews 10:24
