Oasis Shoe Project

Do you remember me mentioning Oasis, the community next door that's dirt poor? Well, back in Oct. a good friend of mine in Virginia emailed me and said he wanted to somehow help poor people. After some discussion among several folks here, I decided to start the Oasis Shoe Project that took place in Oct & Nov. We already encourage the people of Oasis to attend our Sunday church service by providing transportation. The shoe project was designed so that if an Oasis person attended our church service three times in the allotted Sundays in Oct and Nov, then he/she (regardless of age) would be given a pair of shoes. The project was bigger and involved much more work than I had anticipated, but it was ultimately worthwhile. Fortunately, I had a great team of people who volunteered to help me every week. You may get a chuckle from some of the following lessons that we learned the hard way:

• Just because a person says that they know their shoe doesn't mean anything. It may just be that a same aged friend has a size 6 foot, thus it is logical to them that their foot will also be a size 6. And a when a young adolescent girl tells you a shoe size, it may be a girls shoe size 6 or a woman's shoe size 6...which are far from the same size. Ugh!


• Shoes here are marked in European and/or American sizes. For example, a woman's size 9 in the USA is approx. a European size 38. Trying to figure out this very inexact science of shoe size conversion is a serious pain in the neck. And just for kicks, sometimes shoe sizes are in Japanese.


• Many people believe that if their current shoe is a size 6, then their new shoe must also be a size 6, even if it doesn't fit because it's a different style.
  
• Always draw the actually foot, not the shoe because they often are wearing someone else's shoe. (Thus the reason why I purchased a shoe that was WAY too big for a 3 yr old.).


• There's not a single store here, including Wal-mart (called Hiper Paiz) that will give you cash back or credit your credit card if you need to return something. Only exchanges are allowed and it's a pain in the neck too.


• Sometimes I had to buy sandals due to the width of some feet. Men tend to have shoes because of their jobs, but girls/ladies can usually get away with flip-flops which I believe contributed to their feet spreading out and thus being wide.

On at least 4 Sundays we had over 200 total people in our service, about 1/2 from Oasis. The typical attendance from Oasis had been 20-30 people. Every seat and bench was full and young ones were sitting on laps. When all was said and done, approximately 125 pairs of shoes were given away. Of course the shoes were needed, but ultimately we prayed that their attendance in church would expose them to Christ and His love and forgiveness. Thankfully, we had a great series of dynamic and fun speakers during that time period. We pray that we tangibly showed God’s love to our neighbors and also provided good opportunities from them to know Christ more personally.