Re(Act) to Extreme Poverty (Mycoskie)

At www.722.org, Jarrett interviews Blake Mycoskie. Blake shares his incredible story. He didn't grow up in a christian home. His mother was a christian, but only by culture and his father was an atheist. It wasn't until Jr. High that Blake finally saw someone who lived out the christian life. It was his tennis coach: a poor, but humble man who worked hard to support his family. Blake asked him about his faith and the rest was history as his coach invited him to church. In high school, Blake asked Christ into his heart and even his family became christians. His dad even teaches Bible classes now! Blake was actually on "The Amazing Race" four years ago. He and his sister raced around the world and missed the $1,000,000 by four minutes. But after having the experience of traveling, he committed to travel every year. The first, second and third year, he went to Belize, Africa and then Argentina. But while he was in Argentina, he spent a lot of time riding horses to learn to play polo. While there, he learned about these special shoes, which were shoes that the farmers and polo players all wore. Blake bought a pair and did volunteer work afterwards. While there, he noticed that most of the children would walk 2 or 3 miles to carry water. When he would walk with them, they would have to stop every 5 minutes to rest there bruised feet. He decided to start a company, called "Shoes for Tomorrow (hence Toms)". He vowed that if he sold one pair, he would give another pair to the children. He started selling and the next thing he knew, he had sold 10,000 shoes. Then he got to take his family and friends to Argentina and they got to give away 10,000 shoes! But he was losing money on the shoe company still and spent even more money on the trip out of the country. When he got back, Nordstroms, Urban Outfitters and Bloomingdales had all called in asking for the shoes!!! This is when God blessed the socks off his company!! On his next trip, he will be bringing 50,000 shoes to the country to give away. Now that he is a lot of stores, he lives in a trailer and travels around the country, speaking at churches and spreading the word of raising money for TOMS etc. There are now 1,000 people associated with TOMS. He calls them sole ambassadors. When people buy a pair of shoes, he wants them to tell the story. The way that this has affected Blake is that it is an awesome story and now thousands of people are joining together with him to serve God. It has actually simplified his life. We can all serve God with simple acts of love. Mother Theresa said that it is the eyes of the poor, the hurting and the depressed that she sees Jesus. I'm glad I spent the time to listen to this.

Created almost 4 years ago