A Baptist minister from Manchester is a miracle worker, at least when it comes to water.

In the past year, George Hutchings, 61, collected 156,000 pair of shoes, cashed them in for 35 cents a pound, used the money to buy two hydraulic drilling rigs, shipped them to Kenya and dug water wells. The effort brought clean drinking water to 1,200 people living in a remote area.

The people he helped on his trip last month included 600 elementary school students who hadn't had convenient drinking water for 10 years because the school's well was broken.

"The pure joy I felt the day we dug a new well is hard to put into words," he said.

Hutchings donated the rigs to a charitable group that has hired Kenyans to continue drilling. In the next year, they hope to dig a total of 200 wells that would help about 120,000 people.

I wrote about Hutchings, who refers to himself as "The Shoeman," last fall when he was in the middle of his shoe drive. Since 2000, he's helped organize shoe collections for Kenyans through his non-profit Eagle Wing Ministries. But every time he went to Africa to deliver them, he got sick from the water, and he realized that providing clean water to the people was a bigger need than shoes.

He made a deal with a local resale company to buy the shoes he collected. Hutchings used the $54,000 he raised to buy the drills, travel to Kenya and to pay for the gasoline he used driving as far away as Pennsylvania to pick up donated shoes. Hutchings, who had been using a 1995 Ford Ranger with 230,000 miles on it also used some of the money to buy a new pickup and trailer. He said his old truck had become unreliable and often wouldn't start.

The former pastor has an outgoing personality and a booming laugh, and he used that to his ministry's advantage, attracting schools, businesses, churches, temples, Scout troops and motorcycle groups to join his cause.

Dave Cobb, principal for Bowles Elementary School in Fenton, said Hutchings not only got the students excited about the shoes-for-water project, he brought one of the drills he bought to the school parking lot to show the children.

"They were very excited, and some of them got their pictures taken with it," Cobb said. "Just to have that as a visual so the kids could see what all those shoes went towards made the project really connect with them."

In addition, Cobb said that while Hutchings was in Africa last month, he sent the school a postcard.

"It said 'Wish you were here,' " Cobb said. "The kids loved it and were so thrilled, we're going to help out again."

That's right. Hutchings has plans to return to Kenya. This time, he's collecting 200,000 pairs of shoes to buy two more drills — ones that will go down 800 feet and can break through rock.

"I want to bring water to the most arid areas, most desperate areas of the country where the water table is much deeper and there's a lot of rock involved," he said.

Some are so desperate for clean water that they walk eight miles daily to a spring to get it. In one village, the women had dug 20 wells by hand, only to hit bedrock each time and have to start over.

He's planning to share stories from his trip to Kenya and pitch his latest project at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Ballwin Community Center, 1 Ballwin Commons Circle. (For more information or to donate, contact Hutchings at kenyashoeman@gmail.com.)

In addition to water, he brought some local souvenirs to Kenya, handing out St. Louis T-shirts and Cardinals baseball caps.

"They absolutely loved them, although I'm not sure they even knew what they were," Hutchings said.

After the wells were dug, they showed their appreciation by throwing him a goat dinner and planting a tree in his honor.

"I said I was going to take water to the poorest areas of Kenya, and now that's what I plan to continue to do," he said.