Let us look into Elizabeth's wardrobe, namely seven years ago and now:
When she first moved from Silver City to the the Capital city, she owned two pairs of long pants: one pair of Kiko black cotton pants and one pair of Dek Dek blue jeans. She has one pair of sneakers and one pair of sandals.
Now as a university student, she has 22 pairs of long pants, and six pairs of walking shoes. All of the 22 pairs came as recycled pants. She must have tried on hundreds of pairs of pants through the past seven years as I engaged in my activities of gathering clothes for poor Thais, Indonesians and Filipinos, usually passed to restaurant workers and maids(my friends). Out of the six pairs of shoes, she paid for two branded pairs with her own savings. One pair of Nike is so old and worn that she kept it for muddy activities in the fields. The other Nike is so new that she only uses it for jogging on sunny days. The third pair is Clarks that came as a gift from a very kind church lady who took pity on her miserable looking shoes. The fourth pair she bought with $5 in a second hand store. The fifth(basket ball) pair came as a birthday gift from her youth group. The Sixth pair she bought with $10 at a school jumble sale.
We look back and saw how in spite of our reduced finances God has blessed her in her clothing and foot wear. Yet interestingly, she finds that life was much simpler back when she has no choice, when Kiko is wet, she puts on her Dek Dek. When she had a formal event, she wore her only pair of shoes. Other wise she put on her sandals.
But, would she give away her extras now to live like she did seven years ago? Of course not! It is natural to expand, nobody will willingly shrink back to elementary basic necessities.
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