Man to walk 53 miles to raise mission funds
Published 12:44 pm Wednesday, September 17, 2008
- Larry Sloan of Hayden is shown in June during a trip he took to Ecuador. He is with a Quechua Indian child from a remote village in the Andes mountains.
By Melanie Patterson
The North Jefferson News
Fifty-three miles is a long way, especially by foot.
That’s how many miles Larry Sloan of Hayden has committed to walk in order to raise funds for a mission trip.
Sloan is scheduled to go to Ecuador in November as part of a Happy Feet International Ministries “Extreme Team.”
Happy Feet, based in Gardendale, is a ministry that sends people to remote areas of the world in order to put shoes on children’s feet and tell children the “plan of salvation.”
Sloan and 16 other men, many of them firefighters, will make up the extreme team.
Sloan is not a firefighter himself, but rather is a retired policeman who currently drives a Hayden school bus.
He chose to walk 53 miles because that happens to be his age.
Sloan will do the walk at Robert Reid Stadium in Hayden on Sept. 26, starting at 7 a.m. He chose that date because Hayden has an away football game that night and no youth games are scheduled for the 27th.
Sloan has no idea how long it will take him to walk the 53 miles, but he does know that it is 212 laps around the track.
He will have some support along the way. Some friends have said they will walk portions of the 53 miles with him and help keep him awake.
“I want to have at least one or two around to keep encouraging and praying and counting laps for me,” he said.
Sloan is hoping to have people pledge a dollar amount for each mile he walks, or to make a donation toward the mission tip. He said that if me makes more than the $2,300 needed, he will use the extra funds to help other mission team members.
The November trip will be Sloan’s seventh with Happy Feet.
“I just feel like I’ve been called to be a part of missions and I became involved with Happy Feet,” Sloan said. “I just love the ministry, not only for the servant evangelism we’re able to do in other countries, but also to help encourage others to get involved in missions by helping somebody else go.”
For more information about Happy Feet or to make a pledge toward the November trip to Ecuador, call Sloan at 647-0004.
