Guest Blogger - Dede Cropper

A couple weeks ago I bought a plane ticket to return to Ethiopia for a week in April! When I went in 2015, I saw countless kids running around in shoes that were falling apart – if they even had shoes to begin with. At one of the homes we visited there was a boy there that had shoes on, but the soles were mostly worn out. A team member on that trip named Ryan Daly took a photo of this boy with his shoes & this photo has been sitting at my desk for the last year and a half at work, but before then this memory has been etched into mind heart & heart since that day in 2015.

Soon after I booked my flight for this April, a friend told me about an organization called The Shoe that Grows. The founder of the organization created a shoe that is durable & made of compressed rubber (similar to a car tire), anti-bacterial synthetic, high grade tactical Velcro & the shoes grows up to 5 sizes!! Check this out:

If you have kids or been around kids then you know how rapidly they grow. These shoes are intended for children living in extreme poverty that can’t afford to buy new shoes once they outgrow their old pair or their current pair gets too worn. The picture that sits at my desk is the motivation for me to raise the funds so that each child at Love for the Children Academy can have a pair of reliable shoes that can grow with them as they grow.

We only have 5 weeks to raise all the funds, which may not seem like a lot of time, but my trust is in God, who knows tomorrow, before today even ends. So if you’re able to please consider donating financially to make this dream of providing shoes to the children a reality, but most importantly please join me in praying for our hearts as we prepare for the trip & our time while in country.