Early childhood and kindergarten pupils at Abiding Savior Lutheran School collected 3,000 pairs of shoes to help fund construction of a clean-water well in Kenya. The drive was inspired by a Kenyan girl named Esther who visited St. Louis earlier this year to undergo cancer treatment. Esther, who is now healthy and back home in Kenya, stayed with an Abiding Savior family, the Moorhems, for part of her visit. ‘The craziest thing to Esther was the fact that we had clean water … not only clean water, but so much clean water that we had extra to swim in,’ said Alexis Moorhem, pictured here with her daughter Maddie and son Zach with bags of collected shoes. ‘Esther loved to swim. By the end of our time together she even could put her face under water.’ Pupils donated the shoe collection to George ‘The Shoeman’ Hutchings, an area minister who sells used shoes to buy drilling equipment for the Kenyan Water Project. Hutchings plans to use money raised from the shoes to build a well in Esther’s home village.