On a Saturday morning in late June about 80 people gathered in the parking lot of Mount Vernon Church in New Hope to make beds.
Church members sanded and assembled 2x6s to make the headboards, footboards and side rails. They branded the headboards with “B4K” and then dipped the component parts of the beds into a solution of vinegar, steel wool and hydrogen peroxide that acts as a preservative and a bug deterrent.
Before noon they had produced 25 beds.
Facilitating this undertaking was about two dozen volunteers from the Dream Center, an area ministry headquartered in the old Bryan Foods plant in West Point.
Dream Center Golden Triangle is an affiliate of Dream Center Los Angeles, an organization that, according to its website, “provides support to those affected by homelessness, hunger, and the lack of education.” John Almond is the founding director of DCGT.
Bedzz-4-Kidzz is one of the organization’s programs.
It was impossible to be there in that hot parking lot and not be impressed by the coordination of the endeavor, the quality (and sturdiness) of the beds and perhaps most important, the spirit of enthusiasm and cooperation the project engendered.
Like it says on the T-shirts of Dream Center volunteers, “We get to serve.”
On Thursdays DC volunteers deliver and assemble the beds in the bedrooms of children the program has identified.
The organization gets referrals from Child Protective Services, United Way, Community Counseling and applications through the Dream Center Golden Triangle website.
So far the ministry has placed over 600 beds in the homes of Golden Triangle children.
“I never knew so many kids were sleeping on the floor, thousands of them,” said Lynn Suggs, who with her husband, Victor, coordinates the bed placements.
“There are so many needs (in our communities),” said Lynn. “We live in our little bubbles.”
On Thursday Lynn and Victor, Lynn Johnson, who spent his working years putting up steel buildings for Mitchell Engineering, then CECO, and Jason and Elle Willis, who run a ministry called “Live, Love, Christ,” met to make four installations of what turned out to be nine beds.
Also along to help was Aiden Stafford, who is in Lynn Suggs’ Sunday School class at First Baptist in West Point.
The energy levels of the Suggs and Johnson, who are in their 70s, would be the envy of any 30-something.
The beds have to be assembled on location, in the bedrooms of the children who will sleep in them.
After building two beds in a house on 14th Avenue North in Columbus, the group moved on to a mobile home on Sand Road.
The unmarried couple there have five children between them, and the mother is pregnant with number six. There was a small TV and scant furniture. Two window units kept the trailer cool.
Four of the five children — there is a 5-month-old infant — were excited to see the visiting delegation and anxious to help.
With Lynn Johnson’s guidance, the oldest child helped assemble his bed. In 45minutes the group put up a set of bunk beds and two single beds in the trailer.
The materials for each bed with its mattress, sheets, a light blanket and a pillow is about $200.
Two weeks ago in a mobile home in Pheba, a child asked Lynn Suggs, “What’s a pillow?”
A bag of toiletries comes with each bed. Mom and the older kids are given a New Testament.
When the builders complete their work at a home, everyone present stands in a circle, holds hands and says a prayer.
“Lord we pray for sweet dreams for the children sleeping in these beds,” Lynn Suggs said.
The bed builders paused for lunch, then resumed bed building at a house on Waterworks Road. Afterward, the group trickled out into the front yard of the Waterworks home and put their tools into the Dream Center trailer.
On the side of the trailer are images of smiling kids in Dream Center beds and the organization’s credo: “Find a need and fill it. Find a hurt and heal it.”
To label what happens in each of these bed placements as “inspiring” seems trite. Everyone involved in these exchanges is nourished in some way.
When 10-year-old Aiden Stafford got home, she made a shopping list for needed toiletries to go with the beds.
At the bottom of her list, she wrote: “Things we need for the mission” and “There’s a homeless lady that has nothing.”
To donate, volunteer or apply for a bed, go to dreamcenterms.org
Birney Imes (birney@cdispatch.com) is the former publisher of The Dispatch.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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