Wednesday, June 22 - After another successful trip, I returned to the United States this morning after a 13-hour flight home. Although we were able to distribute a lot of shoes and a lot of hope, I always return home from these trips wishing that I could have done more.

I have made five of these trips now and they always seem to go rather quickly. I think we were able to do a lot of positive things in Nigeria and the people that I interacted with were incredible. We were able to bring smiles to the faces of many little children and at the end of the day, that is why we do this work.

I would like to say thank you to everyone at Georgia State who supported me in this trip. I look forward to many more and hopefully some big announcements in the upcoming weeks and months.

Sincerely,
Coach Hunter

Tuesday, June 21 - Believe it or not, it does rain in Africa and sometimes a lot. However, rain could not stop us from continuing to distribute shoes and hope today.

In the United States, when it rains, people just go inside. For many people here, there is no inside. We were fortunate enough to give away a little more than 1,000 pairs of shoes today which was the good news. The bad news is that more than 5,000 children showed up hoping to receive a pair. To be honest, it is the only part of this that I do not enjoy. Turning away a child is never easy, but that also makes me want to work harder.

Tomorrow will be my last day before I fly home from Lagos to Atlanta. These trips always go by quickly and I wish I could stay longer. We are doing a lot of good here, but as always, I wish we could do more. I have a deep respect for all of the mission workers who are helping us accomplish our goals.

I look forward to returning home to start our next campaign which if everything goes well, will be announced in the coming weeks.

Once again, thank you for your support. I have been told that a lot of you are reading this and keeping up with us, which makes all of this even more special.

Until tomorrow,
Coach Hunter 

Monday, June 20 - Today was another fabulous day of distributing shoes and hope to the children of Nigeria. I also learned today how small a world it is that we live in.

While proudly wearing my new Georgia State apparel, I had a gentleman approach me saying he was a fellow Panther (kind of). Larry Goodwin came up and introduced himself. Larry's daughter, Apryl, recently graduated from Georgia State as a member of the women's soccer team. Small world, huh!

All-in-all, it was a great day. I am so proud to be able to represent Georgia State and Samaritan's Feet in such a positive manner. We are bringing hope to so many and it truly is a blessing to be able to work with so many fine individuals.

On a side note, one of my biggest adjustments to move to Atlanta has been the heat. From what I hear, it is actually about 10 degrees cooler here today than back at home. I would never have guessed that!

Thanks for all of the support and I hope to continue to update everyone again on Tuesday.

Sunday, June 19 - Georgia State men's basketball coach Ron Hunter landed in Nigeria on Friday afternoon to begin a one week trip distributing shoes with Samaritan's Feet.

The group spent Saturday and Sunday washing the feet of childen, giving them socks and for most of them, their first pair of shoes. The group will continue their work all week.

Here is some of what Coach Hunter had to say after the first few days.

There is no doubt that it was a really long flight to get over here to Nigeria (about 12 hours), but it has been more than worth it so far. I have adjusted about as well as you can to the five-hour time difference, but once we get to work distributing shoes, I usually forget about it.

We have spent the first few days distributing a lot of shoes as we brought around 85,000 with us. We have a great group helping us out who are working tirelessly to try and help as many children as we can.

It has been extremely rewarding to see the smiles on the faces of the children that we have helped. To be in the home country of founder Manny Ohomne makes this trip even more special as this is where all of this began.

Thank you to everyone for the support as we prepared and left for our trip. I hope the rest of the week can be as successful as these first few days have been.

Fans and supporters can click on the photo album above to see photos from Coach Hunter's trip so far. We hope to continue to update the blog and photos as the week continues.

To donate to Samaritan's Feet, visit SamaritansFeet.org.