The sight of black soot caking the walls and ceilings of Guatemalan homes was one that stuck with Sherry Scheitler long after her first mission trip to the country last summer. It stained the walls out of necessity — the people needed to cook and all they could afford were open fire pits — but she knew something could be done.
“There’s a big need in Guatemala,” Scheitler said. “The main cause of death for children under 5 is respiratory issues and it’s all because of the smoke from the fires in their homes.”
Since Scheitler and her fellow GracePoint churchgoers left Guatemala in 2018, six clean-burning, vented stoves have been installed in homes. Now she’s hoping to help fund many more with assistance from the GFWC Woman’s Club of Plant City.
GracePoint is getting ready to send the money for 10 stoves to be purchased and installed for $150 each, and the Woman’s Club is attempting to raise the money to send 10 more to Guatemala. To do so, the club has been collecting, cleaning and bagging running shoes to be sold to a nonprofit called Funds2Orgs. With the money earned from the shoe sales, the club can fund the purchase of the stoves in the country.
The group plans to collect and clean used running shoes on April 20 at the Rugged Maniac mud run in Dade City, which Scheitler hopes will help the club raise the rest of the money it needs. After the campaign wraps up — sometime around the club’s May meeting, Scheitler hopes — the money will be sent to a ministry called Little Lambs International that installs the stoves in the homes of need.
GracePoint members have been traveling to Guatemala for the last seven years and have helped Little Lambs build and establish a campus in that time. Little Lambs primarily works with orphans, but has also branched out to help families acquire the clean-burning stoves. In 2018, Scheitler’s first year visiting the country, several families of the campus’s security personnel were among the first to receive stoves. More were given out to nearby residents after the ministry did some research and learned of people in need not far from the campus.
Scheitler will be back in Guatemala in July and plans to keep the trend going.
“I’m hoping that the week I’m there, we will install stoves in the morning and go talk to more people that might need stoves in the afternoon,” she said.
The Woman’s Club has already rounded up 68 bags, each containing 25 pairs of shoes, to be sold. That’s more than 1,700 pairs obtained since the group started collecting in October 2018.
“We’re real excited about it and just happy to be able to help,” Scheitler said.