One of the resources we always try to bring on our medical mission trips are expandable shoes. What are expandable shoes?? You may be asking this question, and its a fair question! Not many people have heard about this innovative invention that is life-changing for so many people. So let’s explore together what these shoes are and why they are so important for the people we serve in the mission field.
Our partner, BeCause International fills a very real need in so much of the world with their brilliant take on footwear, “The Shoe That Grows.” These shoes are designed to address the challenges of poverty and inadequate footwear faced by millions of children in developing countries.
Here’s a description of BeCause International’s shoes:
Adjustable Design: The Shoe That Grows features an adjustable design that allows it to expand in both length and width. This unique feature enables the shoes to accommodate growing feet, providing a sustainable solution for children who often outgrow their shoes quickly.
Durable Construction: These shoes are made with durable materials to withstand the rigors of daily wear and various terrains. The robust construction ensures that the shoes can endure challenging environments, offering long-lasting protection for the wearer’s feet.
Simple yet Effective: BeCause International’s shoes prioritize simplicity and functionality. The design is straightforward, making it easy to use and maintain. This simplicity also contributes to the cost-effectiveness of the shoes, ensuring that they remain accessible to communities in need.
Positive Impact: By providing children with durable, adjustable shoes, they now have access to something that will improve their overall well-being and quality of life. Access to proper footwear can prevent injuries, reduce the risk of infections, and enhance mobility, enabling children to attend school regularly and participate in community activities.
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Why Do They Matter?
Traditional footwear does not work for much of the world. Often, the materials used are not created with nonwestern people in mind. In a world where children often have to walk for miles to access clean water and other resources, poorly designed footwear breaks apart quickly and easily. Expandable shoes are made from materials that can handle years of wear. Traditional shoes are also often very expensive, leaving them out of reach for much of the world’s population. Perhaps someone can afford to buy a pair of shoes for his young daughter, but when she grows out of them, she may not be so lucky to receive a second pair of shoes.
Expandable shoes adjust to fit up to 5 sizes, which means that as a child grows their shoes grow with them!
Another constant problem, in a world without these amazing shoes, is that people are often left vulnerable to injury and illness. Without proper shoes, you can imagine how quickly someone could accumulate scrapes and cuts on their feet. With open wounds like these, it is incredibly difficult to prevent that person from contracting infection or picking up a parasite. But with The Shoe That Grows, the wounds never have to happen to begin with. Which means that they are protected from injury and serious illness. Proper shoes are an important part of preventative health care.
How Can You Ensure That Children Have Access To Proper Footwear?
We’re so glad you asked! This month we are focusing on raising funds towards ensuring that every patient we see can have the shoes they need to stay healthy and safe. Without generous donors, like you, we would not be able to purchase these amazing shoes and hand them out to those who need them the most at our free medical clinics. Each pair of shoes costs $20 and we always take at least 180 pairs of shoes for a typical team size of around 10 people. When we have larger teams, and more people to help transport these shoes into the mission field with us, we can take even more!
When you donate towards the good cause of providing shoes for our patients, 100% of your donations goes to the cost of those shoes. Interested in buying someone a pair of shoes and set them up for a long and healthy life? You can donate now on our PayPal page!
In the coming days, you will probably hear a lot about giving because next week is Giving Tuesday!
It’s a relatively recent holiday, starting in 2012 as a global movement to incorporate a day of giving into our yearly calendar. Here, in the USA, the timing of Giving Tuesday feels particularly apt. The day is sandwiched between two major holidays: Thanksgiving (a day to give thanks for all the blessings in our lives) and Christmas (a day to commemorate the greatest Blessing of all: the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ).
So let’s quickly dive into the Bible to see what it has to say to us about the act of giving.
Giving Is An Act Of Stewardship
A central belief of Christianity is that every good thing in our lives is a gift from God. This includes the extra money in our bank accounts. There are wonderful things that could be done to help others with that money, but the first step is to acknowledge that because the money came from God, it belongs to God. And because it belongs to God, it is important to think carefully about how best to use it for His purposes.
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own? “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms
Worship is not just about showing up in church on Sunday mornings and singing some hymns. Worship is an attitude (Romans 12:1-2). Worship is a way of life. Worship is about how we love Jesus and how we love others.
Whatever you do (including the act of giving) is absolutely an act of worship if it is done in the name of Jesus Christ.
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Giving to those in need is an act of service, but it is also an act of love. It is declaring that the people you choose to give your money and time to are worthy of God’s blessings. It is a declaration that they are beloved by God. In choosing to give to those who need it most, you are choosing to love.
And love, as Paul once taught us, is the fulfillment of the Law (Romans 13:8).
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
Mission Partners For Christ Is In The Business of Changing Lives
Thanks to the generous donations of supporters, like you, Mission Partners For Christ has managed to do amazing things for people around the world. Here are just a couple of examples of what your generous donations have made possible:
We have partnered with Renew World Outreach to make the gospel more accessible than ever before. Long after we leave a location, our local partners can continue to share the gospel for many years to come via The Jesus Film Equipment. For a long time, accessibility to the Bible has been a major obstacle for many people due to illiteracy and vision problems, but now that obstacle has been overcome – thanks to God! Technology allows evangelists and missionaries to open doors to a whole new population through Jesus film equipment and audio Bibles.
For each location that Mission Partners For Christ serves, we leave behind the equipment necessary for our local missionary partners to continue to share the gospel long after we’re gone. The cost for this equipment starts at $1550.
Here are just a few pictures that capture the our evangelist partners as they share the gospel with the Jesus Film equipment:
Solar Audio Bibles allow African people to hear the Bible in their own languages. Our partner, MegaVoice, supplies us with all the solar audio Bibles we need to equip brand new believers with the Word of God. These are quite amazing inventions and allows people all over the world the ability to learn about God and grow in their faith in a way that simply wasn’t possible for so very long.
Each solar audio Bible starts at $50, and we bring many along with us at each of our medical mission trips. Your generous donations make it possible for us to continue to provide these at out medical outreach clinics.
Here are just a couple of pictures of the solar audio Bibles we take with us on each medical mission trip:
Here’s How You Can Help Today
Today is Giving Tuesday. 100% of the donations raised through this fundraiser go to the mission work; none of your contributions will go to our administrative cost, so you can rest assured that all of your money will go directly towards the work done in the mission field.
What’s more, your donations are tax-deductible!
You can donate directly to Mission Partners For Christ here on the website or through PayPal.
A Final Thought
To all those who make the generous choice to financially support Mission Partners For Christ, we want to take a moment to thank you. From the very bottom of our hearts, we appreciate the gifts you give so selflessly to support our work in medical missions.
It is not an exaggeration to say that lives are saved and changed for the better through the donations that you send; those who support our work financially are just as important as those who physically travel with us into the field.
Are you considering raising funds for your medical missions trip?
If you have not gone on a medical missions trip before–and even if you have!–you may be wondering about different ways to begin raising funds for going on medical missions trips. Thankfully, there are so many possibilities for you to creatively raise the funds alone, with your friends and family, with your church, or through other people you have never met who–just like you–care about the health and life of people around the world. There may even be ways of raising funds that you had not considered before.
Here are six easy ways of raising funds for your medical missions trip!
1) Host a community concert or event!
Are you a singer or on a worship team? Are there friends or members of your church and their churches who would volunteer to gather and perform for the community? This event involves coordinating with lots of people, but could be worthwhile in multiple ways–the gospel is shared in your home community. You and anyone from your area who also has registered to go on the same trip will raise funds to go together.
Musicians get to use their gifts to the glory of God and truly shine. To potentially increase the fundraising at this type of event, a take-home spaghetti dinner or other type of dinner could be served. This way, members of the community who are hungry or just want to get involved but cannot stay for the concert can take home their dinners, and others who plan to stay for the concert can eat in an area set up for that purpose. It also gives those great home cooks in your church family circle a chance to fix up something delicious for the local people who may be unfamiliar with the church!
2) Invite your friends and family to be part of a multi-family yard sale
You and your family or friends and church family may have lots of clothes and other items in great condition that you no longer plan to use. This could be a great way to open up to the community you live in and gather together with people who would like to offer their gently-used items for sale to help you with raising funds for going on medical missions trips. A large outdoor building, garage, or church community building could be set up with clothing racks, tables, shelves, and more. Everyone benefits by releasing things they no longer need so that others who might need or want it can have it, and funds are raised.
3) Host a community meal and invite friends and family to prepare food!
With the right permits or permissions, along with following certain health protocol, you and your family, friends, or church family could serve monthly or quarter-monthly community meals. Spaghetti, chili, and chicken noodle soups are three popular meals that are easy to cook in large batches and provide inexpensive sides like green beans and dinner rolls. Desserts, water bottles, and other drinks could be offered as well. Styrofoam containers to hold meals for taking home are available at dollar stores, if you are considering ways to keep costs lower and fundraising higher. Community meals also help plant seeds of hope as you fellowship with one another and with people who may never have heard about medical missions trips or Christ before.
4) Make that special thing that you’re famous for!
Do you have a talent for making certain types of foods that others would love to receive or give as a gift? Perhaps you are acquainted with someone who has this talent and would like to share it to help you raising funds for going on medical missions trips. Apple butter is one popular item that can be put in jars with pretty labels and jute rope. Other popular desserts that keep well, bake well, and give well are pies, brownies, dinner rolls, and cookies. If you plan to do this, be sure to follow proper protocol for where you live.
Also, you may be able to partner with other people who decide to get together and offer these foods along with other things like handcrafted jewelry or decor at a winter bazaar (just in time for Christmas). Lots of people look for ways to support local ministries around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and almost everyone likes some kind of home-made dessert created with love for a good cause!
5) Write a book, course, or workshop!
Are you a writer or professional with a skill you could offer to teach other people? Or perhaps you write beautiful poetry, illustrate encouraging words, or love to tell stories? You could create a book or course to be sold online or work with others to inexpensively offer a hard copy book or course in person. This can take as little time as one day to thirty days with good planning and execution. What is something you could help others learn that would also help you with raising funds for going on medical missions trips?
6) Host a 5K Run/Walk!
5K runs and walks are popular in many places. With the right permits and coordination with other people who agree to volunteer their time and skills in hosting a 5K run or walk, you could begin raising funds for going on medical missions trips just by taking a walk in the park at a slightly brisker pace than usual or by going for a run with people in your community. It raises awareness of the importance of medical missions trips and also helps share the gospel while encouraging healthy activities.
What are some ideas you have ways of raising funds for your medical missions trip?
Let us give you a hand with our free fundraising letter template! We have created a free fundraising letter template to assist you with reaching out to people and ask them to support you on your medical missions trip journey. You can visit this page on our blog to sign up for it and it will be instantly emailed to you. We love to support you in your goals and we appreciate you considering the ways you can begin raising funds for going on medical missions trips.
Did you know Mission Partners For Christ has scholarship opportunities for students who are interested in going on a trip but are in need of some financial assistance?
Brittanie is a medical student who traveled with us on one of our trips. Here is her testimony about her experience:
“This wasn’t my first mission trip, so I knew that I would leave Cote d’Ivoire forever changed by the experience. However, I could not have expected the multidimensional change I experienced during those few short days. Despite the long days, long rides, and daily hiccups and attacks against our purpose, my strength was renewed.
As I served in villages where people professed that they felt “forgotten,” I had the privilege of experiencing true gratitude and thankfulness. There were so many moments where I was reminded of what gratitude and thankfulness look like, but one particular moment stands out the most.
On the last day of clinic in the villages, a female elder from one of the villages neighboring Atakassikoro sat across from me in seemingly good health. She had no complaints, a few achy bones here and there, but she just wanted to see the doctor. After we completed her exam, she looked me in my eyes, smiled, and in her native tongue she said, ‘Thank you for the work you are doing; thank you for coming to see about us.’ Every other person who sat in that chair before her had expressed their gratitude, but there was something touching in the compassion and genuineness in which she shared her gratitude. I may never be able to verbally express the impact those few moments had on me as a young physician in training, but I will never forget it. I don’t know what my future holds but I know that I will be a better physician because of my time in Cote d’Ivoire.”
If you are a medical or dental student who wants to be apart of helping others feel seen, heard, and loved on one of our trips, apply for our scholarship!
Mission Partners for Christ Scholarship
Our desire is for medical and dental students to come to understand how medical missions can be a part of God’s will for their lives.
METHOD OF APPLICATION Scholarship applications will be reviewed as they are submitted. The application must be submitted at least three months prior to the trip departure, and the applicant must be accepted as a Mission Partners for Christ trip participant before applying for the scholarship. Email your scholarship application to info@missionpartnersforchrist.com
AWARDS Awards will be announced by email as they are awarded. The amount of the award will be up to $1000 and is to be used for project and transportation-related expenses.
APPLICATION The applicant must submit a letter of no more than 300 words that describes their current course of education and their motivation for serving in medical missions. This letter should address what they hope to learn from their participation in the short-term medical missions experience.
After the trip is complete, the awardee is required to submit a summary report of their experience that focuses on the change that took place in their life as a result of the trip.
Have you considered how you–a current medical missionary–might encourage medical missionaries of the future? The pandemic has not ended our ability to reach people globally and participate in making a difference! We are blessed to be a blessing in many ways over the last year. This mercy and grace is continual.
Current medical missionaries might not yet be going on as many trips, but are still able to communicate with organizations and people in some of those places or help raise funds or donate supplies that support training doctors, staff, and patients in places where there is a lack of basic medical care. They are still able to prepare for a future trip and stay updated on things related to where they are going.
There are other things that current medical missions volunteers can do as well! We would like to share with you three things you can do to encourage medical missionaries of the future.
Be An Advocate
There might be medical residents who have not been a regular part of their faith community since they started to learn and practice, but they dig in and their faith deepens. As this happens, they seek new ways to give back to the world. Or there could be a registered nurse who has just moved to your city and is looking for an extra way to be plugged-in to a new volunteer opportunity. A newly certified medical aide might be unaware of how they can volunteer or participate in medical missions trips. A current medical missions volunteer like you could advocate for global medical care issues.
You can shine a light on the different ways these medical missions volunteers of the future could be a part of the changes they are eager to see. Your advocacy may encourage medical missionaries to seek out organizations where they can volunteer sooner rather than later!
Share Your Testimonies
Your testimonies can be the spark that lights up what is already in the heart of future medical missionaries who are not even grown up yet. Your compassion and dedication shines bright when you share the good things you have seen or heard. Not only that, but the glory of the gospel of Jesus is highlighted.
Your words encourage those who have dreamed of becoming a doctor, nurse, medical aide, counselor, or being part of some kind of medical missions team, and stir up the faith of everyone who hears you. You could blog, ask for permission to share about things that have changed since your last trip in church, or find other creative ways to share your testimonies as part of your regular day. You could do something similar to what we do on our Facebook page, and post live videos sharing good news and prayers.
Educate
As medical care professionals and volunteers, there are things you stay updated about on a regular basis that other people might not. You could provide education about some of those things in a way that brings hope and clarity to people who might one day become a medical care professional or volunteer. What you share about malaria in a region where there is a lack of access to basic health care could stay on the heart of a person who is thinking about going back to medical school now that their children are grown up. Or someone who is considering which medical field to go into might be moved to hear about how some in hard-to-reach places are accessing eyecare or dental work. You never know who might benefit from a bit of news that you share.
Mercy and grace are experienced every time there is a miracle in someone’s life. It is certainly a miracle any time someone receives much-needed basic medical care when they previously could not. It is also a miracle when someone decides to become a medical professional because they heard the story of someone like you. Or because they experienced the compassion of someone like you on the job.
Would You Like to Learn More?
Are you interested in learning more about our current upcoming 2023 trip to Guinea? We are leaving February 4, 2023 so there is plenty of time to sign up if you have considered it. If you would like to learn more about Mission Partners for Christ, we’d love to answer your questions. We look forward to hearing from you!
So many of you have generously donated to help support our cause to minister to under-served and unreached people around the world.
Today, we have a couple of quick updates for you on two of our most recent projects.
Clean Water Well in Benin
As we reported earlier this year, we have received a tremendous response from our supporters in helping us reach our goal of providing a second clean water well in Benin. To date, we have received $6,174 towards our goal. Here are a couple of videos of the people in Dassa enjoying the water well that all of you made possible.
Clean Drinking Water in Dassa Benin
Children of Dassa Benin enjoying their new well
Transportation Fundraising Update
We are continuing to raise funds to ensure that missionaries have access to the transportation that they need. Our last recipient of a motorbike was Reverend Bake of Benin Republic. Prior to receiving this gift, Reverend Bake was using his bicycle for transportation to get to and from the villages he works with in his evangelism efforts and training for transformational community.
To date: we have raised $10,752 towards our goal.
We wanted to share with you a picture of Reverend Bake with his new motorbike
Reverend Bake with his new motorbike
How You Can Help
If you would like to be part of life-changing gifts such as clean water wells or transportation – we hope you’ll consider a donation to our causes.
You can give to our GoFundMe which was created to help raise funds to provide much-needed transportation for African missionaries.
If you would like to donate to our clean water fund, you can contribute to our Facebook Fundraiser.
Mission Partners for Christ PO Box 203 Manhattan, IL 60442
If you are interested in learning more about Mission Partners for Christ or Global Hope Network International, with whom we are partnered in Benin, you can learn more by reviewing their respective websites at:
