Sleep in Heavenly Peace is a national organization that builds and delivers beds to children without beds of their own. Referred to as SHP for short, it has been featured on CNN and celebrity Mike Rowe’s show Returning the Favor. Thanks to the efforts of a local pastor, Poplar Bluff has a chapter of SHP.
Pastor Dave Elledge of The Bluff Church attended a presentation on SHP in February 2019.
“There are few times that I walked into something and walked out of it changed,” Elledge said about that day. “I had no idea that kids having a place to sleep was a problem.”
He did his research, talked to a representative and by May 2019 the city of Poplar Bluff was home to a chapter of SHP. The first build day was sponsored by his church in August 2019.
Thanks to the training given to him by the national organization, the volunteers were able to cut and sand the boards and pre-drill the screw holes for fifty beds. They put together the headboards and side rails and then stained everything. The last step was to brand the SHP logo onto each bed.
Other churches have sponsored build days since then. Two of them have been sponsored by Westside Church of God and Memorial Baptist Church.
Some churches have helped by providing the funds to buy lumber and bedding materials. Others have donated bedding materials directly.
Northpoint Nazarene Church has the distinction of being the local SHP’s pillow church. Whenever the stock of pillows gets low, Elledge calls Greg Gilberto of Northpoint. That congregation buys the pillows and Gilberto blesses them before they are passed along to SHP.
All the bedding materials provided with the beds are new and matched to what it is believed the child will like.
“We try to make each bed as special as we can for the kid,” said Elledge. “For some of them, this is the only thing they have that is theirs.”
Most of the beds given away by the Poplar Bluff SHP have been in the city but beds have been delivered to Doniphan, Fairdealing, Piedmont, Bloomfield and Ellsinore.
“There are a lot of problems that we can’t fix,” said Elledge. “This is a problem that we can fix.”
Any church or organization that would like to donate to SHP or sponsor a build day can contact him at dave.elledge@shpbeds.org.
Anyone with a child between ages 3 to 17 who needs a bed can contact the national organization through their website on shp.org. The national organization then contacts the chapter nearest the child with the information needed to deliver a bed to the child’s home.