Churches partner to donate shoes to Haiti

Jacksonville resident Dee Simmons is willing to give the shoes off her feet to bring relief to someone thousands of miles away in Haiti.

“You look in your own closet and see all of the shoes that you’ve got for your feet and you’ve got brothers and sisters who don’t have any,” she said. “The earthquake was months ago and it was in the news and on TV and it was eventually put in the background, but the need is still there.”

Simmons, a member of Sandy Run Missionary Baptist Church, is just one of many volunteers who gathered at Rose Brothers Furniture parking lot on Onslow Drive Monday for the Soles4Souls charity shoe drive. Several churches and organizations have given time and money to collect boxes of new shoes for Haiti earthquake survivors since disaster struck the area eight months ago. Joel Churchwell, pastor of Sandy Run Missionary Baptist Church partnered with Soles4Souls, Inc. charity of Nashville to start the community wide shoe drive. Although the original goal was 500, at least 3,000 pair of shoes has been collected since June. They’ve been boxed and driven by volunteers to the Soles4Souls warehouse in Tennessee. Churchwell said that donating shoes instead of money gave people a chance to see exactly how they were helping the residents of Haiti.

“We actually started discussing it amongst the membership in late May and we reached out to the other churches and we came up with June 1 as the date to kick it off,” Churchwell said. “For our particular membership we saw that it gave us a visual of a need and it was very inexpensive because every one could go out and get the shoes they wanted and still be a part of it.”

Soles4Souls collects shoes from the warehouses of footwear companies, organizations and individuals to donate to people in need. Churchwell said that the response from his own congregation was so great that he reached out to several churches across the county.

“We asked pastors throughout the community to partner with us and the concept was to allow our members to participate and bring shoes at the altar as a sacrifice to show that we are concerned about the issues in Haiti,” Churchwell said. “So we did it for the next four Sundays. Because of the overwhelming response some of the other community organizations, we extended it up until the present time.”

Churchwell received an outpouring of helping hands from a dozen churches in Onslow County, as well as chaplains with Deployment Processing Command-East aboard Camp Lejeune and Camp Johnson, businesses and non-profits organizations. Other congregations soon followed the lead of Sandy Run Missionary Baptist by placing shoes on their altars as an offering during Sunday services.

“Once he reached out and told us the mission he was trying to accomplish it was something we could do as far as ministry abroad and local,” said Pastor William Jones of Marshal Chapel Missionary Baptist Church. “This was our first opportunity to reach out and when he presented this to us we thought it was a good opportunity towards that ministry.”

Sneakers, flats, flip flops of all colors and sizes piled among altars across the area every Sunday, an emotional sight for some.

“I was overwhelmed, and I did not know that our congregation would come out like they did,” said Miranda Williams, secretary for Marshall Chapel. “I have a passion for shoes, and if I can go out and buy shoes for someone else and not buy any for myself, then I know that's a good thing. People were coming Sunday after Sunday bringing shoes and it just brought tears to my eyes.”

Chaplain John Rudd of the Deployment Processing Command said that the military community got involved by placing cardboard boxes at several commands to collect shoes.

“We put it out not just to service members in command but also to their families and passed the word and let them know what we were doing,” Rudd said. “We’re going to do this through September and we expect to get momentum and get a lot more the next time we do this.

Churchwell said that they will continue to welcome shoes as an ongoing contribution to Soles4Souls, and hope that they can expand efforts to a semi annual event each year. He feels that it was not just the actions of one group or congregation, but many people in the community who were willing to come together through their faith and help heal the souls — and soles — of Haiti.

“What really got me excited was when we approached our military counterparts and various pastors and we all shared it as a collaboration,” Churchwell said. “We all agreed that it would be at a neutral location, and God would get the glory and not one church. You couldn’t ask for anything more.”

WANT TO HELP?  Soles4Souls will accept new shoes of all sizes for Haiti earthquake survivors. To schedule an appointment for drop off donations or for more information, call Sandy Run Missionary Baptist Church at 910-346-4840.