Partner With Us

Mark and I have begun the adventure of working with a ministry called Samaritan’s Feet. They have been ministering in South Africa for a few years now, but their story begins with a young boy in Nigeria receiving his first pair of shoes. I cannot retell it in a better fashion, so I highly recommend you read it here.

Since 1999, Samaritan’s Feet has been giving shoes to children and adults who don’t have them in different parts of the world. They connect with local churches to help make the shoe distributions happen. At a shoe distribution, a person will have their feet measured for the right size shoes, and then someone will wash their feet, share the Gospel with them, and fit them with a new pair of socks and shoes. It is such a special experience and an awesome opportunity to share the love of God. Samaritan’s Feet has given shoes away in South America, the US, and some parts of Africa, already.

Recently, they decided their ministry would like to focus their attention on South Africa, to give away 100,000 pairs of shoes there, distributed among the 9 cities where the World Cup will be hosted next year. They were not sure how they would accomplish this exactly without any permanent staff on location, when we got connected with them through some mutual friends who run a missions organization called Youth On Mission! They felt like we were exactly what they were praying for! Meanwhile, we’d been praying about the Lord opening the doors for us to minister in South Africa for a few years, to be closer to Mark’s parents for a while, and when some friends introduced us, this seemed like an answer to our prayers, too!

Our work in South Africa will begin with connecting local churches with the Samaritan’s Feet ministry. We hope to get SF set up as a local charity that will be eventually self-sustaining. Volunteers from the churches we connect with will help us at the distributions, where we’ll wash feet, give away shoes, and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. We also hope that people who come to know the Lord at these distributions will get connected with the local body of believers that is volunteering with us, so that they will be discipled and grow in their faith in Christ.  We’ll begin with the goal of giving away 100,000 pairs of shoes in the 9 cities where the World Cup is being hosted, here in South Africa next year. Eventually, we hope to minister in other parts of southern Africa as well, wherever there are needs, connections and opportunities. Our ultimate goal would be to have the shoes manufactured right here in Africa, providing jobs, and cutting down the cost of getting shoes to people who need them.

There are two specific things that make giving away shoes in South Africa so significant:

1) A pair of shoes can save a life here. Many people here live in areas where there is poor sanitation, and disease is festering. Footborne disease … snakebites … the risks of not having shoes are serious. A person living with HIV who gets a cut on their foot — if it gets infected, they’ll die. So there is such an opportunity to preserve life, while preaching of the true Life here. It’s estimated that as many as 10,000 people die every day from footborne illness and disease that could have been prevented with a basic pair of shoes.

2) This will be a ministry of reconciliation! Through our efforts here, white people will be washing black people’s feet, and vice versa. People from different tribes, ones that have been warring for centuries, will be washing each other’s feet. This demonstration of love and humility has the potential to break barriers like nothing else, and we are excited to see what the Lord does with it!

With the Samaritan’s Feet team back in the US, and staff members who will come on short term trips to South Africa, Mark and I will be organizing these shoe distributions, connecting with local churches in the cities where they will be held, and helping with the hosting of missions teams that will come over from the States and other parts of the world to help.  K-mart recently donated a million pairs of shoes to Samaritan’s Feet, and we already have 100,000 pairs waiting for us in storage in Cape Town, so we are excited to get started!

In order to make our work in South Africa possible, Mark and I have a team of people partnering with us in finance and prayer on a regular basis. We are still in need of more support! If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact me at ccollie@samaritansfeet.org, or comment on this page. You can give online at Samaritan’s Feet’s website, (click here) and note “for Mark & Caroline Collie” in the Notes/Instructions Section. You can also send checks to Samaritan’s Feet P.O. 78992 Box Charlotte, NC 28271 – Memo Mark & Caroline Collie to direct your gift to us. Gifts are tax-deductible for American taxpayers, and there are other options for giving as well, so if you’re interested, please let me know!  We will trust the Lord to bless you in return.

Proverbs 11:25 A generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters will himself be watered.