Blessed Feet

I woke up early this morning with anticipation. “Today’s the day we deliver shoes!!”  We arrived at Emanuel early and got to visit with some of the people before the church service began. Such precious, sweet people! The worship service was overflowing with people from Emanuel and the surrounding communities, as we worshipped the Lord in a mixture of Spanish & English. You could feel God’s presence in abundance and a woman went forward to be saved.

After the service, we spoke to the people about how they had touched our hearts in February and that many people from the United States had been praying for them and had sent a gift for them. We told them that the shoes they were receiving, should serve as a reminder that they had ‘beautiful feet’ and they should go forward sharing God’s love with the other people of Honduras.

The excitement on the kids faces as they took their turn picking out their shoes was so cool! As I fitted one little baby girl with pink sandals, I picked up her foot to discover it was covered in mud. I frantically looked around for something to wash her feet with and found nothing. So I took my bandana and spit on it and cleaned her feet. I know some people will think that is pretty disgusting, but didn’t our mom’s do that to clean our faces when we were little? Anyway, the mom smiled at me, so I hope that meant it was acceptable.

Distributing the shoes took quite a bit of time as word got out and the line grew. I stepped away from the crowd for a moment to catch my breath and take in the scene. I saw our team working together as if they were born to distribute shoes and the Hondurans walking away with smiles on their faces and new shoes on their feet. An older woman stopped and proceeded to tell me her life story and about her husband who died of some kind of tumor. All I knew to say was I was sorry. She hugged me tight with tears in her eyes and thanked me for the love that we had shown to her people.

As for a perfect ending to the shoe distribution, the boys that I had first noticed the barefeet of in February,(the ones sitting on the bench in my pictures), appeared just as we were finishing up. Jeneen and I gathered various sizes and got them fitted with some shoes. They were still smiling and waving and looking at their NEW SHOES as we drove away in the bus.

We went to be a blessing to the people of Emanuel today but, we went away as the ones who were blessed.