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Soul to Sole sends shoes to island basketball teams Fred Koenig, May 24, 2010
COURTESY PHOTO
Bram Hubbard and his cousin Tyson Bennett hold the flag of the Marshall Islands in front of athletic shoes collected for girls’ basketball teams.
By Fred Koenig Special Contributor
COLUMBIA, Mo.—It doesn’t take much to play basketball; a hoop and a ball will get you going. But when we think about basketball, we naturally assume the players have athletic shoes.
That wasn’t the case for teams of girls playing basketball in the Marshall Islands. But the girls no longer play barefoot, thanks to the Soul to Sole ministry started by Mindy Hubbard, a schoolteacher and member of Ohio Street United Methodist Church in Butler, Mo.
The Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean are widely known as the site where the U.S. conducted testing of nuclear weapons in the 1940s and 1950s. Ms. Hubbard got to know the islands in 1997, when she went there with her husband, Steve, and they adopted their first son.
“I immediately had a heart for the people there and started thinking about ways I could give back to them,” Ms. Hubbard said.
While there, she purchased several handmade craft items. After she returned home, she contacted women in the Marshall Islands and continued to buy their crafts as gifts. Britt Mitchell, an American college instructor teaching in the islands, then told her about the basketball teams.
Ms. Hubbard turned to her church, and a Sunday school class started a shoe collection ministry. Friends who teach at Ms. Hubbard’s school took donations of athletic shoes in their classrooms. One church member even collected the shoes in her beauty salon.
Offerings at Ohio Street UMC were used to buy more shoes, and one member volunteered to pay for shipping the total collection: 244 pairs of shoes and 312 pairs of socks. The shoes were then distributed by the Marshall Islands Basketball Federation.
“I would love to see there be enough shoes in the Marshall Islands to go around, so that anyone who wanted a pair could have one,” Ms. Hubbard said. She has collected more pairs and hopes to surpass the number that she shipped in 2009.
The ministry has now spread beyond the Marshall Islands. FIBA Oceania, an international basketball association, received permission from Ms. Hubbard to use the Soul to Sole name and has begun soliciting shoe donations from Australia and New Zealand for other islands in the region.
The Rev. Art Ellsworth, pastor of Ohio Street, said he was pleased to see a church member take initiative to start a new ministry and was glad the rest of the church got on board.
“The ministry has been embraced by our church,” said Mr. Ellsworth. “I think this is a hidden treasure, and shows how United Methodists are working silently but effectively using special spiritual gifts.”
Mr. Koenig is editor of publications for the Missouri Conference.
COURTESY PHOTO
Ms. Hubbard turned to her church, and a Sunday school class started a shoe collection ministry. Friends who teach at Ms. Hubbard’s school took donations of athletic shoes in their classrooms. One church member even collected the shoes in her beauty salon.
