Walk a mile...or a hundred...in their shoes

For those of you who know my dad, you know he really likes to find good sales. The last one he found before I left was for some hiking sandals at bass pro shop. He got me a pair to take with me to Perú and so they are the only pair I brought. They were doing fine for about the first two weeks until they started to crack and now they are really falling apart. I went into town to look for shoes (in Peru the average male is 5ft 4in so as you can imagine it´s a little hard to start with) and a good pair of hiking shoes was nearly $60. In case you don´t know, the average income in Ayacucho is $2 a day. This means that it would be a full months wages for the average Ayacuhano to buy a pair of shoes like this.The average household income in the US is $50,000 so as a percentage of income it would be like these shoes costing about $4,000. If you saved up a months income in the US you would most likely be saving up for a really nice TV with entertainment system, a boat, a car, or maybe remodeling your house. Here in Ayacucho, however, it would only be enough to buy a pair of shoes. After thinking about this to myself I starting looking around at the children's shoes in the orphanage, and the shoes of people on the bus as I went to town. After doing the math in my head, and looking at the shoes of the people I´m living in community with, I realized that walking in these shoes for another month might not be all that bad. It may also play a part in living in community with the people in Ayacucho.

While speaking about shoes, I want to share a story I heard from Shane Claiborne (if you don´t know who he is you should look him up. pick up a book or two of his, and listen to a sermon of his). He was talking about when he lived in Calcutta and worked with mother Teresa. He noticed one day that her feet were grossly deformed and he asked some of the people he worked with how they got to be like that. They said that they periodically got shipments of shoes and Mother Teresa would make sure that everyone who needed a pair got one. She was always the last person to pick out her shoes and the shoes were often old, falling apart, too big, or too small. As a result, her feet became deformed. This was just a small sign of how she lived out and suffered for the gospel.

Hopefully the next time you put on your shoes, or buy a pair of shoes you can think back to these two stories, not to feel guilty, that´s never my point, but just think of how blessed you are. Also, hopefully, you can live a little more intentionally and maybe feel convicted to help out those who may not have means to buy something as simple as a new pair of shoes.

Peace,

Brandon