Shoes for Orphan Souls: ShoeNews

By Buckner President Kenneth L. Hall

For 10 years now, Buckner International has collected shoes for orphans around the world through our Shoes for Orphan Souls® ministry. And since 1999, we’ve collected and given away almost 2 million pairs of new shoes to boys and girls all over the world. I think you’ll agree that’s a lot of shoes.

But it’s also a lot of children.

Every pair of shoes represents the many boys and girls whose faces light up when they received their new shoes. So you see, shoes have faces. I’ve seen many of those faces and I can tell you, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.

They are faces like Dima Leinweber.

Dima knows the importance of a new pair of shoes. As a former resident of Orphanage No. 2 in St. Petersburg, Russia, he remembers the feeling he had when a Buckner volunteer gave him a new pair of shoes during Vacation Bible School one summer.

“I was excited,” said Dima, who is now 16. “Because when we got shoes [at the orphanage], they weren’t usually new. They were just old shoes.”

Now, more than four years later, Dima steadily loads pallets of shoes for international shipment alongside his friends at the Buckner Center for Humanitarian Aid in Dallas.

“I’m here to stack boxes to help out the little kids who don’t have shoes,” he said. “It’s kind of fun, because they used to do it for me and now I get to do it for them. It’s more than just giving them shoes, something that fits them. It shows that somebody cares about them and loves them, you know? Simple stuff.”

Dima was adopted by a family living in Texas and his mom, Tabetha Leinweber, said volunteering with her son at Shoes for Orphan Souls was a “full-circle” experience. “My son was a benefactor of shoes coming from Buckner, and it’s coming back around now, full circle.

“Dima would tell me, ‘Mom, everything I owned I would sleep with under my pillow,’ A pair of shoes to these kids meant so much.”

Now you know what I mean when I say “shoes have faces.”

We’re on the verge of collecting our 2 millionth pair of shoes, but we need your help to get there.

I’m asking you to consider a generous gift for Shoes for Orphan Souls to help us celebrate our 10th anniversary and to push us over the 2 million mark.

But more importantly, I’m asking you to see the faces of children like Dima, the children in Russian orphanages and the many other orphans around the world.

Make a donation today.