For the past two years Angels from Heaven supported a young college student named, Abby, who goes to San Juan, Nicaragua the sister city to Newton, MA to work on community service projects. Our shoe drive this year was outstanding! I was able to send shoes to India as well as Nicaragua! We collected 236 pairs of shoes. They came from many people who wanted to help, including a young girl named Nina who collected 65 pairs. One hundred and eighteen small size shoes went to Nicaragua and 118 larger sizes went to India. I can’t say “Thank You” enough to all of you for your help in making this project a success. Below is a letter from Abby along with some photos.

Dear Mr. O’Brien,

On May 27th I traveled to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua with eight other freshman college students for my fourth time to work on community service projects in Newton’s Sister City. San Juan is located on the southwest coast, is an impoverished fishing village that lacks many resources we often take for granted. I have been twice in 2005 and once this past winter. While down there we have worked on projects such as painting worn out blackboards, painting schools, building a preschool, digging a well, delivering school supplies, helping the mobile library go out into the country to exchange books at schools, teaching English, and assisting Habitat for Humanity in building safer ovens and water purification systems. This trip we were also able to distribute tons of shoes that you collected. Many of these children had been wearing sneakers with holes in them, sandals that were falling apart, or no shoes at all. They were very grateful to be handed a pair of almost new shoes, which they will be sure to get plenty of use out of. Thank you and your donors so much for your donations. Without them many more children would have to walk the miles to school without shoes.

Sincerely Abby