Post by Chad Houck, GivMusic Blog Contributor: Chad is the co-founder and director of World Wins International.  You can follow Chad and his family on their travels at http://share5.org.

I was recently reading a blog post from a gentleman named Lee Bezotte.  He was describing an experience that he recently had (with his six year old son in tow) that regretfully is both symbolic of a growing tendency in our society and an unfortunate consequence of our own insecurities combined with a slightly skewed view of reality.

In his post, he mentioned visiting a handful of churches in his community on a weekday with the intent of inviting the pastors and staff to a workshop on social media.  Stepping out of the social web space and into the physical world, he was shocked at how inaccessible these churches really were.  Some were locked down and empty mid-week, with nary a person to be found.  The most poignant, however, was the church that had grown so large, so popular, and possibly so controversial in its community that the staff “greeted” them… from behind a wall of bulletproof glass.

Like so many things in life can, reading his post has caused me to have a recently heightened awareness of my own speech and actions.  Last month, for instance, my family and I had committed to walk in the shoes of, or more accurately the lack of shoes of another, during a local TOMS Day Without Shoes event. The day of the event came, and we were surprised by the unseasonably cold 44-degree, rainy weather which caused the turnout to be much lower than we anticipated.  I remember considering whether or not this small gathering could really make a difference to anyone, and whether my family and I should just “pack it in.”  My answer came in the form of a small, enthusiastic group of young students.  Barefoot and smiling, they gleefully marched out into the cold and rain to chant “surrender your shoes” to the unassuming downtown businessmen we passed by on our march.  These young people were willing to undergo a little discomfort on behalf of children they likely will never meet so that others might hear their story . More importantly, they simply did what they said they would do.   Chalk up one more point for third graders.

I was watching the Amazing race on Hulu last night, and following the wrap up of the episode, I jumped to (continue reading…)

Post by Chad Houck, GivMusic Blog Contributor: Chad is the co-founder and director of World Wins International.  You can follow Chad and his family on their travels at http://share5.org.

In 2007 my wife and I had the pleasure of taking a two week trip to Ghana, West Africa to do some speaking.  On our arrival, we asked about the possibility of hiking Krobo Mountain, the area where the tribal natives used to live.  The first mile or so was fairly flat, but I had heard that the terrain at the top was a bit more challenging.  I debated if my Asics running shoes were appropriate, or if my Asolo waterproof cross-hikers might be the better choice with their more aggressive tread.  On the day of our hike, I noticed two of our guides had only leather strap sandals with flat, smooth soles.  One person was wearing the same shoes they had worn to church, yet I was the one who felt overdressed.

Last week I was down in Mexico on a missions trip with an American team of High School students.  We were doing construction work, so in the morning, I got up, crawled out of my sleeping bag, and laced up my Vibram-soled steel-reinforced work boots to hit the job site.  After a good hard day of kicking shovels and dropping hammers on my feet, I returned to the campsite and slid my toes out of my boots and into a pair of slightly more comfortable Converse All-Stars.  Later that night, I ditched my Cons for my Crocs sandals to trudge to the shower.

Before you label me a “retifist” (a person with an irrational shoe fetish), allow me to share what has my soul all fixated on my soles.

While the African instance stuck in my head for a while, the Mexico scenario didn’t so much as make me even bat an eye until earlier this week.  That is when I saw a day on my calendar that I had committed to “take a walk” in another’s shoes.  Technically, it would be more accurate to say that I had agreed to walk in their lack of shoes.  April 8^th is the date for the TOMS Shoes national “One Day Without Shoes” campaign, and a day that both my wife and I, despite a corporate shareholder’s meeting and a handful of appointments, will go through with nothing on our feet.  It is the day where we will make an effort to better grasp how the less fortunate in this world live, work, and play – barefoot.

In many developing nations, both children and adults must daily walk many miles for water, food, or medical attention.  Adults may suffer scrapes from work in the fields.  Some children are not allowed to attend schools for lack of footwear.  Others simply can’t attend because of sickness and disease resulting from infected cuts on their bare feet.

In Ethiopia today, approximately one million people suffer from a disease known as Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring, yet completely curable disease caused by walking barefoot on volcanic soils.  The sharp clay cuts the soles of the feet, impregnating them with small pieces of silica and causing lymphatic disease and severe, incapacitating swelling.  Prevention is as simple as a pair of shoes coupled to some basic hygiene.

So what can YOU do about it?  Start with awareness and ACTION.  Join me by going barefoot on April 8^th, whether for an hour or the day.  Go to the One Day Without Shoes website and educate yourself, then either join an event in your area or host one of your own.  You may even want to buy a pair of TOMS shoes to slide your tired, bare feet into at the end of the day.

Last Christmas, TOMS provided over 37,000 pairs of shoes to children in Ethiopia to help prevent Podoconiosis.  They were able to do so because of 37,000 people that either bought or gave TOMS as gifts during the Christmas season.  For every pair of  TOMS they sell, they give a pair away, One for One.  Perhaps they should be your next pair of shoes?

Don’t have the dough to go out and buy you and a your new friend on the other side of the world a new pair of kicks?  No worries! You could always offer him or her a pair of your gently used ones by donating them to Soles 4 Souls (www.Soles4Souls.org), a charity that is giving away a pair of new or gently used shoes every 9 seconds.

Find a shoe drop-off location near you at http://www.soles4souls.org/about/locations.html

A Guest Blog Post by Chad Houck

As 2009’s final weeks and days pass, I find myself at what has often in the past been a difficult season.  It’s that season where I evaluate my past year, perhaps contemplate setting some new lofty goals, and maybe even lay out a few new practices that I’d like to implement into my life.  About every third year or so, I been known to buy a gym membership that I later fail to utilize and try to get out of come March.  That’s right, New Years and its accompanying resolutions are right around the corner.

Personally, thanks to the lessons I’ve learned over the past year of my life, I plan to approach this New Year a bit differently.  I won’t be setting any earth shatteringly high bars to leap over.  I likely won’t even set any “resolutions” at all, save one -  to begin.

You see, I’ve come to realize that the primary reason I’ve failed to achieve certain goals or to take advantage of certain opportunities that I’ve encountered may not have had anything to do with the difficulty of the final objective.  In fact, probably more often than not, the things I either wanted or needed to do weren’t even that difficult.  I just never got the ball rolling.  I simply failed to begin to do something.

Lately, however, I’ve come to realize just how far you can go in the 365 days following that all-important first step.

Perhaps there is no better example of this than a young friend of mine from Arizona named Austin.

Austin Gutwein

If you met him today, you’d likely be amazed at by how humble this remarkably influential young man is.  At a surprisingly young age, he is directly responsible for the development of 2 clinics and a high school in Zambia, Africa, as well as additional projects in Kenya and Swaziland.  In 2007, the organization that he founded (at the age of 11) provided bicycles and World Vision’s AIDS caregiver kits to 250 indigenous AIDS caregivers in Sinazongwe, Zambia.  For Austin, 2009 will be remembered as the year that his organization crossed the $1,000,000 mark in funding for AIDS orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Oh, and also as the year that he turned 15.

Austin Gutwein didn’t set out to build the world’s largest basketball free-throw shoot-a-thon. In 2004, after watching a World Vision video about AIDS orphans in Africa, he realized that these were children just like him.  He felt that God was calling him to do something to help them, so on World AIDS day, with his friends and family sponsoring him, 9 year-old Austin shot 2,057 free throws, one for each child that would be orphaned by AIDS during his typical school day.  As his father Daniel counted the shots, Austin’s solo effort raised just over $3000 that day.   More importantly, however, it was the beginning of Hoops of Hope.

Austin will be the first to tell you that he had no idea where those initial shots would lead.  The following year he was joined on the court by several friends and collectively they raised over $35,000, supporting and caring for 100 orphans.  2006 saw the first school built in Zambia, providing 1,000 children the opportunity to envision a future with an education – But it never would have continued if it hadn’t begun.

Occasionally we see an opportunity before us but (continue reading…)