The Grace Place: A thrift shop of caring

THE GRACE Place Where purchases help meet others’ needs

Arlene Yoder, one of the many volunteers at The Grace Place, puts price tags on items that were for sale at the thrift shop.The items were contributed to Grace Place by a local merchant. Arlene has been volunteering for seven years. She frequently works with another volunteer, Arvylla Breshears. (Photo by Gaye Bunderson)

By Gaye Bunderson

Imagine a store packed full of nice things.

That’s not hard to do; there are many stores like that. Now imagine that anybody can walk into the store and find something worth purchasing without spending ‘an arm and a leg’, and that any money they spend goes toward helping other people in the community. What kind of store is that? Well, The Grace Place in Nampa fits the description to a tee.

Located at 16470 N. Franklin Blvd. in Nampa, the store has been overseen by Operations Manager Craig Eshelman for 12 years. Eshelman brings to the position 25 years of experience working in retail at the Emporium in Oregon, as well as a heart for ministry, with experience as a church administrator and an executive pastor. (Abby Silva is store manager. The complete name of the store is The Grace Place Love INC Resale Shoppe, but it is most generally known as just The Grace Place.)

The primary mission of the store – and its main motto – is to help churches help people. The store is tied to Love INC of Treasure Valley, not only in location but in purpose. On the Mission page of Love INC’s website at loveinctv.org, a statement reads, in part:

“Our mission is to mobilize local churches to transform lives and communities In the Name of Christ. Simply put, this translates to Helping Churches Help People. Love INC of Treasure Valley partners with dozens of local churches and hundreds of Christian volunteers who actively engage in verified service opportunities …”

The Grace Place is the principal source of monetary aid for Love INC of Treasure Valley, and Love INC is its chief reason for existing. “The store is the major support for funding,” said Eshelman.

The relationship between the two entities allows Love INC to do what it does, and it’s a layered approach to help people in need, referred to as “clients”.

Explained Eshelman, “Love INC has a phone bank that starts in tiers. First is people who are in need of something, such as furniture or clothing; then, we build a relationship with them.”

Staff gets to know the clients, help them, and care for them.

“Then we restore hope,” Eshelman said. That may look different to each client in order to meet their diverse needs.

“Thursday nights are nights for life skills classes. There are 20 different options,” said the operations manager.

Life skills may include how to look for work, handle finances wisely, and parent well. “We can provide them with a coach or mentor. We also help them find church resources for such things as addictions. They can stay in the programs for 18 months; and if, for instance, they’re working their way out of debt, we try to help them learn better money management. A large percentage learn to live without going into debt again.”

Clients must show a verifiable need for what is given to them through the store – be it couches, clothing, or other items – and that requires a voucher that must be presented in-store as ‘payment’ for goods.

Love INC teams up with roughly 48 churches, including some in Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Meridian, Greenleaf, Homedale, Wilder, Middleton, Star, Parma, and Roswell. [See the list at https://www.loveinctv.org/wp/community/churches/]

It’s definitely a church-based network, but someone may occasionally be referred for help outside the church when necessary.

One thing neither Love INC nor The Grace Place ever does is require a statement of faith from clients (and certainly not from shoppers). “That is totally up to them,” said Eshelman, “but we are unapologetic about our faith. We’re very Christian and very biblical.”

But let’s get back to the store and how it functions. It’s a place that has several rooms and sells everything from books to clothes to chests of drawers and more. The store has spread out over the past nine years and is spacious and clean. “We’ve been very blessed,” Eshelman said.

The store gets its merchandise through donations. What helps Grace Place deal with the influx of items, some of which may not be particularly clean or in great shape, is its volunteer team of 120 people (give or take, depending on time of year and other variables).

The volunteers put some love and care – cleaning, refurbishing and repairing – into many of the things that are donated. There is an on-site workroom where volunteers with carpentry and fix-it skills put quality back into the products. “If things are in a state of disrepair, they can turn them into jewels,” Eshelman said.

Grace Place also has a volunteer team that sews, and some washers and dryers that they might use on a limited basis to clean cloth items. “We try to be good stewards of the things people donate,” Eshelman said.

He also has a “team of gentlemen”, as he calls them, that delivers large and heavy items to Love INC clients on a twiceweekly basis and also picks up bigger, harder-to-lift donated items as well.

Like any good, successful store, Grace Place stays current with the seasons. This past April, staff put out Easter décor and merchandise; and come Christmas, they’ll be displaying yuletide items for decoration or for purchase.

“We are always working offseason, too,” said Eshelman, explaining they won’t be selling summer clothing come fall or vice versa.

“We have storage on-site,” he said. The store keeps order thanks to the generosity of its volunAbby Silva teers. “We have teams that move things like off-season clothing, and it gets messy sometimes.”

The Grace Place holds frequent sales and clearance events. Sales are generally once a month and include parking lot sales. “We’ve been doing that for the last seven years.”

Without a doubt, The Grace Place will keep functioning for a long time to come, and by extension, so will Love INC of Treasure Valley. Stated Eshelman, “The community at large supports us; we have a very good reputation in the community Craig Eshelman and in the neighborhood.” And of course the dozens of churches it partners with will always need and provide backing and support as well.

As for Eshelman, he’ll keep overseeing the operation. Asked if he stays very busy at work, he replied, “It’s certainly a fulltime job.” n For more information, go to https://www.facebook.com/ TheGracePlaceNampa/.

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THE ROAD Less Traveled Of men, mountains, God and nature

Jason Herring

As an outdoor columnist it certainly helps if you love the outdoors, and I do. I am a trailrunning junkie and an outdoor enthusiast at heart. I love the mountains and the wilderness, and I love to read about adventures in the back country. I realize that not everyone is wired this way, but if you’re like me, you need to get off-the-grid to recharge and refocus. It’s not surprising then how this can shape our ideas on church and worship.

Years ago, my father was doing door-to-door visitation when he knocked on the door of Dick Flood, who was better known as “Okefenokee Joe.” Okefenokee Joe starred in numerous television shows including a nature series I watched as a kid called The Joy of Snakes. When my dad invited him to church, Okefenokee Joe invited him out to his back porch. “This is my church,” he said, gesturing at the woods around his home. It’s funny because over the years I’ve heard the exact same thing from many people in Idaho. One guy in my church moved up into the mountains because he preferred a county where the ratio of elk to humans was somewhere around 15 to 1.

And I get it. I really do. I’ve attended pastors’ conferences and youth rallies with thousands in attendance. I’m a “PK” (Pastor’s Kid), and I’ve been raised in church my entire life. I’ve been to countless revival meetings and religious events, and I’ve felt the energy of a large gathering. But I have never been to any spiritual gathering where I felt closer to God than I felt on Mount Borah or any of the mountains that I’ve climbed in the great PNW. On 10 of the 14 mountains that I’ve climbed, I’ve been alone, and 6 of those 10 times I was quite literally alone as the only climber on the mountain. Being alone on the mountain gives such clarity and focus. There are no distractions. Just solitude in the grand cathedrals of

nature the way that mountaineer John Muir experienced it. And I have never felt a stronger sense of God’s presence or a sense of wonder at His handiwork. From trailhead to summit, I just talk to myself, talk to God, and worship. Someone might feel the same sense hunting big game in the wilderness or fishing at the lake or vacationing at the beach and watching the ocean. If you know, you just know. Nature offers something that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s no wonder that even those who don’t know God are drawn to its beauty, some mistakenly even worshipping the creation as god. My mom has a degree in art and her favorite artist has always been Norman Rockwell, who Jason Herring was iconic for his Saturday Evening Post covers. When I was a teenager we went to Stockbridge, Massachusetts on vacation to visit Rockwell’s home and art studio. Seeing the detail and rich colors of the paintings up close was an amazing experience, and it gave me an even greater appreciation for the artist. We live in the museum of the Creator. The wilderness is His art gallery. Nature is His studio. And every time I see a new waterfall or mountain peak or get to witness a blazing sunset, I gain a greater appreciation for the Artist. It’s not hard to see why many Christians will opt for the church in the wilderness to a church gathering in their community. In nature, you set the time and the agenda. You don’t have to worry about the service going too long, and you wouldn’t mind if it did. For the introverts, there’s no awkward meet-and-greet-the-stranger-next-to-you. You don’t have to look a certain way or worry about your appearance unless you’re planning on taking some Instagram worthy pics of your excursion. There are no expectations, no pressure, no judgment or praise; it’s just you and the unbeaten path. Now let me tell you a story.

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This May I was back for my second night of the Boise Harvest Crusade being held at the ExtraMile Arena on the Boise State campus. I stood in the stands with my three kids as Chris Tomlin led 11,000 people in worship. I sung my heart out to the familiar anthems, and when he closed the set with “My Chains Are Gone,” I cried my eyes out. Greg Laurie brought an amazing message, and it was the power of God as hundreds responded to the gospel that night. There’s something very special about gathering together with fellow believers to worship our one and only Savior. For one thing, it is the best evidence that we can offer our community of the reality of the Advent of the Messiah. Read John 17:20-23.

Comparing corporate worship gatherings to the solitude of wilderness worship is not an either/or proposition. Jesus did both. And both are necessary and vital to the spiritual health and growth of the believer. You are deeply impoverished if you don’t take time to gather with fellow believers in worship. It’s not just for a watching world; it’s also for you. In Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown writes: “Show up for collective moments of joy and pain so we can actually bear witness to inextricable human connection. Women and men with the stronger true belonging practices maintain their belief in inextricable connection by engaging in moments of joy and pain with strangers. In simpler terms, we have to catch some of that lightning in a bottle. We have to catch enough glimpses of people connecting to one another and having fun together that we believe it’s true and possible for all of us.”

Football games and funerals, concerts and demonstrations, parades and vigils are all points where we can share in collective joy and pain. And that’s why your local church is so important. You see, despite the flaws and shortcomings of ministry leaders and church members, we can’t forget that man and woman are the crown of God’s creation. Lives that have been redeemed and restored are His masterpiece, and they are no less beautiful than the most stunning vista in nature. You’ve probably heard the cliché that churches should be hospitals not museums. I get the point, but it’s actually both. It’s a place of healing and triage, and it’s also a place where you can muse on the ways and works of God made visible in the lives of men and women and children. One Sunday you hear a message about what God did in the past as recorded in the Bible. On another Sunday you hear a testimony of how a life was transformed by God’s grace. And the result is that “we believe it’s true and possible for all of us,” and we leave the art gallery with a little more appreciation for the Artist. n

Image by Sophia Hilmar from Pixabay

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