Real Life Church Outreach Ministry is blessed to be a small part of the work that Sleep In Heavenly Peace does in Kankakee County! After a recent Thursday bed delivery, Brandi LaMie shared the following reflection.
Andrew Petitgoue, Brandi LaMie, Abbey Brown, Ethyn Graham, and Hannah Carlson at a Thursday Night Bed Delivery with Sleep in Heavenly Peace
In our community there is a “sleeper cell.” It is a quintessential Boots-on-the-Ground group of caring people who have one common goal: No Kid Sleeps on the Floor. The Kankakee Chapter of “Sleep in Heavenly Peace” serves families one wooden bed at a time. The volunteers have been working for Six and a Half years and built and delivered over 1,600 beds to kids who did not have one. 1,600 kids in Kankakee have had a group of 5-7 dedicated strangers quietly assemble in their bedless rooms, and with a bit of mechanical noise and a micro amount of plastic: left behind a sturdy, simple twin bed with fun sheets and blankets.
Most of us have an innumerable amount of blankets on our beds and couches. Some sleepy kiddos drag their favorite flannel woobie into their tiny bed with them at night. These silent superheroes at SHP want that for EVERY kid in Kankakee: Starting with the 100 kids currently on a waitlist; those are the bedless babies we know about.
A team of craftsman and laypeople donate their time several Saturdays a year to buy and cut wood, pre-drill holes in headboards and footboards and create rollable boxsprings called spines. Later, these “kits” are built on site for children without a bed. Read that again: Children. No. Bed. This team from SHP has a compassionate network of people who donate funds and pillows and blankets, reliably. The simplicity and precision in which this thoughtful ministry conducts itself and deposits dignity is deeply encouraging.
Volunteers sign up in advance to join a team that carpools to the locations of those families who are anticipating, sometimes, the first and only piece of furniture in their home. Some have had tragedies, like a fire, or an eviction; some are starting over for different reasons. But when the team leaves their home, something incredibly human is left behind: physically a bed, but spiritually, belonging.
I did not expect the quickening in my heart that happened on my way home: there is a boy in bed for the first time, maybe ever. I have boys, grown now, but the number of times their bed has had to be upgraded is high: and the times when it was necessary to put it off for way longer than it should, was a hard thing as a parent. Twice God, literally, sent us new mattresses. Mattresses. But my boys never went without a bed. For these families served by Sleep in Heavenly Peace, the tangibility of what God sends is immediate and fundamental to being a person.
The challenges that the organization faces tends to be in manpower, people willing to show up on a front lawn they’ve never known, for kids they may never see again, and use their hands and hearts to BE Jesus, the carpenter. Sustainably, the extra wood leftover from the build days gets used in a bonfire that the team uses to heat up a branding iron and stamp each head and footboard with 3 letters: S.H.P.
Interested in learning more about the Kankakee County Chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace? Check out their website: https://shpbeds.org/chapter/il-kankakee/
Interested in volunteering at SHP with the RLC Outreach Team? You can see the dates we are participating and sign-up here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0549AAA828A1FDC16-61833514-quarter