Erin Oquindo received 99 pairs of shoes and 154 pairs of socks last year for her ninth birthday. All of which she promptly gave away.
Erin Oquindo sorts donations at the Nashville-area drop point for Shoes for Orphan Souls, for which the Vacation Bible School at her church in Franklin, Tenn., raised 261 pairs of shoes and 605 pairs of socks.No, Erin isn’t unusually finicky about footwear, nor does she harbor an orthopedic obsession. What she does have is a heart for service.
When Erin invited friends to her birthday party, she told them she didn’t want gifts for herself, but asked them to bring shoes and socks to donate to the Dallas-based charity Shoes for Orphan Souls.
“She didn’t feel like she needed anything, but she knew other people who did,” said Robin Oquindo, Erin’s mother. “She never thinks about herself; it’s the way she’s always been – it’s just the way God made her.”
It is also just one of many missions projects in which Erin has participated.
Braided pigtails and smudged Puma sneakers give every indication that Erin, who celebrated her 10th birthday in September, is an average girl excited about reaching “double digits.” But ask her about her extensive charity work, and her dark eyes reflect fond memories of missions projects that outnumber those of people many years her senior.
“It makes me happy,” Erin said, between bites of an after-school peanut butter sandwich. “It honors God and what he did for us.
“I think he feels happy, too.”
During just a few short years, Erin has donated her time and efforts to an array of causes, including hurricane relief, clothing and food drives, and aid for animals. In spite of an ever-increasing number of extracurricular interests and academic challenges, she has no intention of slowing down.
Erin’s introduction to service came through helping her Sunday school class at ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tenn., hang posters asking people to donate money for missions projects.
Following Hurricane Katrina, Erin found hands-on opportunities to serve through assisting in the relief efforts initiated by her church. That catastrophe also gave rise to Erin’s first charity-focused birthday party.
For her eighth birthday, Erin asked her friends to donate money to the United States Equestrian Federation’s hurricane relief fund. Erin, herself an equine lover and competitive horseback rider, said that like all of her service projects, helping horses connected well with other aspects of her already busy life.
“The secret is that everything has to do with everything else in my life,” Erin said, explaining that her love for horses developed partly through the horseback riding lessons she received for her seventh birthday. “It comes full circle,” she said of the horses and birthdays connection.
That circle also explains the overall motivation behind the service projects in which Erin participates. Doing missions work, she said, is just a natural response to knowing what Christ has done for her.
“He is my Savior, and he’s my bridge to God,” said Erin, who was baptized about three years ago. “He died on the cross, so we can do good things.”
Erin said she wants her missions work to help others learn about Jesus, which is one reason her efforts with Shoes for Orphan Souls are close to her heart.
Her ninth birthday party was only the beginning of Erin’s relationship with Shoes for Orphan Souls, an organization devoted to providing “new shoes and socks to orphans and at-risk children in the United States and throughout the world.”
Her involvement continued last summer as she helped promote Shoes for Orphan Souls as the 2007 Vacation Bible School missions project at ClearView.
Because he knew of Erin’s previous involvement with the organization, ClearView children’s minister Shane Pass asked her to help him motivate other VBS students and to serve as spokesperson for the missions project. It was a role that required Erin to speak before a group of her peers and appear as a guest on a radio show.
“She isn’t typical,” said Pass, who has known Erin for about seven years. “She has an amazing temperament for missions.”
Pass is quick to commend both Erin’s mother and her father, Ruel, for their encouragement and support of her service projects – for her “opportunities to be involved.”
While Erin’s mother acknowledges that the service projects are a family affair, she also points out that Erin’s participation is self-motivated. “We don’t think it’s a selfless, charitable act if you force someone to do it. We just stand behind her and do our best to make it happen when she comes up with these ideas.”
Erin’s mother said that part of their role as parents is to help Erin understand the entire process of the missions projects.
“We try very hard to do the whole thing,” her mother said. “We buy shoes, we help collect them, and we’re there to help load the truck as well.”
So far, Erin has participated in nearly every aspect of a Shoes for Orphan Souls collection drive that gathered 15,000-plus pairs of shoes for the ministry. She badly wants to take the next step: to travel overseas with the shoes and put them on a child’s feet while sharing the story of Jesus.
Her parents are willing for that to happen once Erin is a little older. For now, Erin is always on the lookout for the next local project. She said she and her mom work through ClearView, Moody Radio and other connections to seek out missions opportunities.
Even though Erin’s favorite part of the missions work is seeing the array of items that people donate and the support they provide, there is really only one thing she wants people to know through the efforts.
“Jesus loves you.”