By Melissa Robinson
Contributing Editor 

  Mark McLeod is on a mission. He wants to get a barn full of shoes on the feet of underprivileged children in Santa Barbara, Honduras, but has no way of delivering the approximately 200 pairs of shoes.

Mark McLeod of Locust Grove distributed plates of food to school children in Honduras during one of his mission trips. Special photo

  Although a plumber in the maintenance department for Henry County Schools, his private ministry began several years ago after marrying his wife, Elisa, who is from Honduras. Nestled between Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Honduras is a relatively poor country with little resources and McLeod said that many area churches take mission trips there because of the poverty.

Recently, McLeod and his wife were preparing to visit her family and he asked other maintenance men who work for the school system if they wanted to donate so that he and his wife could feed hungry school children in Honduras

  “We are able to feed the kids at a dollar per plate and through donations we came up with $158. We fed 90 kids at this one school,” he said. “All of the school children showed up and some of the kids actually walked miles to get there for a free meal, many with no shoes and dirty and blistered feet.”

  He said that because his wife is from Honduras, he has been able to see, first-hand, the poverty and need, especially of the children. They often send money down to her mother so that she can buy and prepare food for local children or take food to the poor people in the mountainous region.

  “Several of the children wouldn’t eat their plates of food, because they were saving the food to take back and share with their families,” said McLeod.

    Realizing that there was a great need for shoes, particularly for children, he set about collecting children’s shoes. He said there were many pairs of shoes that went unclaimed in the lost and found at the schools where he worked and he received permission from officials to donate the shoes to the children of Santa Barbara. He also received generous donations from others as well.

He said he originally set up an arrangement with an American businessman, who had a farming operation in Honduras, to take the shoes to Santa Barbara, where McLeod’s mother-in-law would get them to the children; however, the man's business went under and so did his way to transport the shoes to the Central American country.

  “I had a guy with an agricultural business, he would go back to Honduras twice a month and I showed him a video of us feeding the kids and he said he would help us by taking shoes every time he went, so he was taking down two 50 pound bags of shoes and would get the shoes to my mother-in-law,” said McLeod.

  He said, that for many children, shoes are a luxury and that most of the children he encountered had never had anything more than flip-flops on their feet.

  “Buying shoes down there would be like if you went out and spent $300 for a pair of shoes. The average income there is like $800 a year,” he said.

  McLeod said he had his first taste of mission work in 2000 on a trip to Haiti with his brother’s church. As a plumber, he said his skills are sought after and there’s no shortage of work.

  He said he hopes to continue his mission of providing not only shoes, but also clothing and eventually toys for the children of Santa Barbara, Honduras.

  “These kids have so little, so when they get something as simple as shoes or a pair of pants or a new shirt, it’s like Christmas for them,” said McLeod. “When you go to the country and see such poverty, you want to go back and help.”

  McLeod is hoping to reach out to local churches that may be planning mission trips to Honduras so that they may take the bags of shoes he has collected. He said that the airlines will usually allow passengers a 50 pound bag and he has approximately 400 pounds of shoes.

  “When I can get the shoes I already have delivered, then I will start collecting again, and maybe even collect more things for the children,” he said.

  If your church is planning a mission trip to Honduras and you would like to help deliver the shoes, contact McLeod at 678-725-6095.