Bringing New Shoes to Kids in Guatemala

I’ve been working for Buckner for about three and a half year now, and I’ve been to Guatemala a couple of times. I’ve traveled with a group of mothers and daughters looking to grow closer together through service, and I’ve traveled with a team of Dallas Baptist University students playing the Guatemalan national baseball team.

So now, as I sit at the airport preparing to board the flight for my third trip to Guatemala, I’m facing an entirely different situation. On this trip, I’ll be with a team of individuals – strangers from around the United States – giving up a week of their lives to deliver shoes to orphans.

Shoes. It’s a really simple thing. But it’s the one thing many of these children never have. Maybe they inherited a pair from someone else or maybe they outgrew their own pair two years ago. Either way, they wear what they’ve got. Holey. Smelly. Old. These are the only shoes they have.

Well after this week, there are going to be a lot of happy kids in Guatemala – kids dancing around, laughing and playing in their very own new pair of shoes – simply because a group of people decided to give a week of their time to make them happy. And the greatest part about it? This group might even get a chance to change their lives.

How? Through sharing Christ’s love. You see, these shoes are more than just shoes. These shoes are the physical expression of Christ’s love for each and every orphan. Every single pair we have to give them was collected and donated by someone who wanted a child to know they were loved. And it’s our job to tell them this!

I’ll be blogging about our trip all week right here. I’ll do my best to post some videos and photos so you can be a part of this incredible experience. There are also some really great people on this trip who you’ll surely get to hear more about throughout the week.

So keep reading! More to follow…
-- Jenny Pope