If My Sandals Could Speak

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your God reigns!” Isaiah 52:7

Well, it finally happened. I guess deep down I always knew this day would come. My faithful pink and white Crocs, sandals I took on every trip to Africa, finally gave out. Ironically enough, after all I put them through in a decade of use, they simply split walking around my kitchen. As my heart flooded with emotion, I may or may not have resembled Tom Hanks character in Cast Away, undone by the loss of his trusty friend, “Wilson” the volleyball, to the ocean. Ahem.

I threw my sturdy sidekicks away, only to pillage through the trash to recover them. All that these Crocs have seen, heard and experienced proved too much to send them to the dump. I sighed these words to my son: “If these sandals could talk, wow… the stories they would tell.” 

If my Crocs could share their life story, it might sound something like this…

“How can I possibly sum up ten years’ worth of memories in a few short paragraphs? I carried Angela into Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya, and that’s just on the African continent. In the Holy Land, I walked where Jesus walked and stepped into the Jordan River. I served as Angela’s companion on family vacations to sandy beaches and Smokey Mountain cabins. I traveled through more airports than I can remember. But once the red clay of Africa embedded herself into my treads, I knew I would never be the same.

I first touched down on African soil in 2007. Since then, Angela and I have made more than fifteen trips to the continent she loves so much. Every day of every journey was an adventure. I stood on makeshift soccer fields where boys kicked a ball they’d made out of twine. I strolled across real soccer fields preparing for open-air crusades to share the Gospel in Daboya, Ghana. I witnessed thousands upon thousands of people make the arduous trek in their own worn sandals, to hear the Gospel shared by Evangelists Reinhard Bonnke and Daniel Kolenda in Liberia.

I stood in schools where hundreds of women from across Northern Ghana crowded to hear life-giving messages. I danced in a tambourine circle at one of those services. I visited orphanages that broke Angela’s heart and celebrated the dedication of Haven of Hope, a home Angela helped to build for widowed pastors’ wives and orphaned children in Malawi. I walked dusty roads in remote areas to meet the faces of women with ideas – who simply needed a place to start.

I held Angela up as she shared gospel illusions and Biblical stories with thousands of children at Kids Camps. I let her cover me with glitter and paint from more craft activities than I can count. I knelt with her in the huts of African chiefs and laid gently next to her cot as she slept in a mud hut. I was her bedside friend as she laid ill in a hospital bed. I marched across flooded streets as she resolved to make it to Soboba to visit a community she had blessed financially. I remember how the children welcomed us with chants of, “You are welcome, you are welcome.”

I dug through muddy village streets as she went to a late-night church service as village members braved torrential rain to thank her for donating chairs. I was gently washed off by a young boy as Angela stood on the muddy riverbank where both children and cows drank from the same water. I stood in corn fields where pastors had planted life-preserving crops from funds. I walked across swinging bridges and through the hallowed halls of slave castles. I watched thousands of women stand for hours in the pitch black to hear Angela share a message when the electricity went out in an outdoor conference.

I stepped into jeeps and felt the tall grass of the Ruaha Game Reserve as Angela rested. I moved Angela through Bible college campuses, including a week she and her father ministered side by side in Tanzania. I made the trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro and waited at the base as she climbed in her hiking boots. I held her as she crouched down next to Maasai women selling wares and village elders presenting Angela with chickens they killed for our meal. I rode in countless vehicles across the African countryside, stopping occasionally for bananas on the side of the road.

 I struggled to hold her up as children in villages mobbed her as she handed out candy. I was nearly carried off by an unexpected rainstorm flooding the market as Angela rushed to get out. I stood in churches as Angela prepared to speak or lead worship. I helped her into a canoe as she crossed the river to get back to Daboya where they planted a church. I’ve seen the inside of tents, the ceramic tile of guest homes, the halls of hotels and the mud floors of huts. I’ve listened to women’s stories of heartbreak and faith. I’ve bent in two as Angela sat cross-legged in the dirt to tell a child about Jesus under an African tree.

I’ve been washed with spickets and hoses and buckets and water bottles, and even muddy water drawn from the river. But Angela’s tears have washed me the most. We’ve been through a lot together; shared more memories than most people do across ten lifetimes. And maybe, even though I can’t carry her another step, maybe she’ll carry me in her suitcase, just to see where God will take us next.”

Make Life Matter No Matter What

With Love,

Angela