Parker Road Baptist Church is a collection site in North County for Eagle Wing Ministries.  We are looking for donated shoes, new or used, that will be sold and the money used to purchase water drilling rigs.  These rigs will drill for fresh water in Kenya, Haiti,and other places around the world and provide clean drinking water for many villages and towns.

Please bring your shoes in pairs, preferably rubber banded together, to the main entrance of Parker Road Baptist Church.  Inside the glass enclosure at our main entrance is a barrel marked "Shoes for Kenya" that can be used to drop off your shoes.  Eagle Wing Ministries has stated that they do not want high heels.

Eagle Wing Ministries is a missions organization founded by Hutchings and based out of St. Louis, MO. Hutching has been going to Kenya since 1998, bringing shoes and medical supplies to the people in the country's most poverty stricken areas. However, due to a recent civil war and governmen­tal upheaval, shoes can no longer be shipped into the country.

Not being able to ship the shoes gave Hutchings the motivation to tackle what he calls Kenya's biggest national problem — the lack of water. "In most rural areas of Kenya, there is no running water," Hutchings said. "People have to walk miles just to get a bucket of water, usually without shoes. That's why I started shoe ministry, but realized that wasn't the heart of the problem — the root of the problem was water. I remember one woman that to this day breaks my heart. A mother was carrying a jug of water on top of her head. The water was for her children and was contaminated. She knew that, but had no other choice."

On his next trip to Kenya, Hutchings team learned  how to drill a well for fresh water. He described the process of going from shoes to water. "I can't just turn my head away from something like this," Hutchings said. "At first I didn't know anything about water. Then, I learned. If I know what the need is and know how to fix it, that makes me responsible. I had to do something to help so I could look at myself in the mirror."