It’s Not About the Shoes

Describing our Shoes for Orphan Souls mission trip to the Mexican border sounds almost like the start of a joke: “Did you hear the one about the Texas church, the Christian band, and the volunteers from five states?”

True, the 40 members of our group seemed disparate. First Baptist Church of Zavalla sent 18 members on what Pastor Jacob Fitzgerald says is the first mission trip for the congregation in the church’s 100 years of existence. Joining them were three members of The Running Back, a contemporary Christian band based in Little Rock, Ark., and about 20 others from diverse areas, backgrounds, ages and ethnicities.

David is a businessman from Moline, Ill. Maurice is a minister from Chattanooga, Tenn. Carolina is a teacher who came from Phoenix. Lindsey and Lauren are both freshmen at Texas A&M who met for the first time on the trip. Likewise, Marjorie, who I had never met, lives a block from me in Arlington, Texas.

Our common denominator for the June 9-13 Shoes for Orphan Souls trip was, of course, shoes. Tennis shoes, dress shoes, casual shoes, red shoes, white shoes, cartoon-character shoes, flowery shoes. Hundreds of shoes collected by volunteers nationally and sent to the Buckner Humanitarian Aid Center in Dallas before being shipped to the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Despite the reason for the trip, we all discovered quickly that our time in the Valley was not about the shoes. It was about the children who received them. We worked and distributed the shoes among the children living in colonias, a border phenomenon that defines complete poverty, right here in our own country.

In a season where Buckner needs more shoes than ever before, I prayed that our efforts to place new shoes on little feet would reflect the life-changing message that goes with them – the message that someone cared.

Russ Dilday is director of public relations for Buckner International.