Shoes For Their Souls...

About a week after Dylan was in Afghanistan, I sent him an email asking if he needed me to send him anything. Crazy I know. But I wanted him to feel missed and loved and appreciated and I was a little emotional... I remember telling my mom that I sent him that email and she said "Emily, he's only been there a week!"

Anyway. He responded and told me that he was fine... and that of course, he didn't need a thing! Then he said this:

"Instead of sending me things, why don't you gather some kids shoes and the Chaplain here can hand them out to the local kids?"

I was immediately taken back and very excited...

A. Because Dylan is a sweet guy and all, but never thought he'd pay so much attention to things like that and put forth some effort to do something about it.

B. Because HOW SWEET?! We could actually do something to make a difference in a child's life all the way across the world!

I remember it was in the middle of the night that I received that email, and I immediately sent an email to (almost) every member of my family asking for their help.

I kept thinking that I could do this alone, and only send a few shoes, but I pictured the Chaplain handing shoes out to a group of little kids... and I could see all those sad faces of the kids who didn't receive a pair. I wanted to send as many shoes as I could. And I'm a girl who comes from a HUGE family and I knew they'd be glad to help :) I'm so lucky to have them!

During our Sunday night dinners (That's a whole different post: Coming soon!) the family slowly started showing up with shoes of all sizes. Two of my aunts wrote me checks for $120 total to go buy shoes. They were all so generous!



I bought a TON of shoes (I think I made about, 4 trips total) at Once Upon A Child which is a gently used children's clothing store. Most of them were under 4 dollars a pair!



I counted them all out today as I was loading them into the box and cutting off price tags...



There were 33 pairs total. I giggled when I was finished counting...



33 is our lucky/favorite number :)



I taped up the box and headed to the post office this afternoon. $41.05 later and all 33 pairs are on their way to put a smile on a child's face! (By the way, my Uncle Chris came with me to the post office because he wanted to pay for the shipping... what a great guy! I bought him a bag of peanuts, hot tamales and peanut M&M's for being so nice to such a poor college student!)

Maybe I will take another collection before Dylan's time is up in Afghanistan. It sure feels good to know my family and I will be (hopefully) putting a smile on a child's face, soon.