A new pathway out of homelessness

After the goodbyes, Dave stood in the doorway of the auto-parts store, and with the chill night air rushing in, unfolded the picture Corie had drawn. On it, she had written: "Remember us."

A real house

Christina was practically singing. It was the first week of April, and her family was in a house.

A real house, red brick, with three small bedrooms, a bathroom with buckling tiles, and a basement hideaway for their oldest, Joey. He threw a thin mattress on the floor and hung up his treasures: a Denver Broncos towel and two Broncos hats, so faded the orange looked pink.

The neighborhood was poor; some homes had plywood tacked across broken windows, or iron bars in place of screen doors. But it was just a few miles from the Broncos' football stadium, and Christina figured they could drive there on Sundays to watch the fans stream in. "The boys are so excited," she said.

Dave and Mark had asked their congregation for donations and hauled over a trove of hand-me-downs: an overstuffed couch; plaid easy chairs; a microwave; two huge, ornate dressers.

One afternoon, Dave invited Christina and Joe to pick out a queen-size mattress -- on him -- at the furniture store where he worked.

"It was $700," Christina marveled.

"After his store discount, $647," Joe said.

"It's so thick I need to jump a little to get up on it," Christina said.

"We've never had a new bed that no one else slept in," Joe said, "much less a bed like that."

He and Christina had browsed the store in the past and felt the clerks sneering. This time, though, "they were falling all over to help us," Joe said.

Dave had hoped for just such an experience.

Joe had done a great job raising the children, but both mentors thought it was past time for him to find work. Rent was $900 a month. The family could make it, barely, on Christina's salary of $11.90 an hour. But they had nothing to spare for a medical emergency, or a repair to their 20-year-old van. If Christina ever lost her job, they'd be on the brink of eviction within weeks.

The way Dave looked at it, the key to nudging Joe into the job market was to give him confidence. So he asked his colleagues at the mattress store to go out of their way to let Joe know he mattered: "The point was, let's show them that there are people out there who will treat them with respect."