December 17, 2024 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Luke Mickelson, founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, tells how a meeting in his church turned into a Boy Scouts project, a Christmas tradition, and 50,000 free beds for needy families every year.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The search for the Our American Stories podcast go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Up Next to the story of an ordinary
man who did something extraordinary when he found out about
(00:31):
an issue not very many people think about child bedlessness,
here's Luke Michaelson of Sleep and Heavenly Peace to tell
his story of selflessness. Our words, by the way, not his.
Take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Luke, you know, I'm from a small town Kimberly, Idaho,
thirty seven hundred people. I went to school there, graduated there,
and built my family up, and I had my.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Whole career lined out. I worked for a local water treatment.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Company and was going to be buying it and had
my retirement set.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I mean it was. I was all planned out.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And in twenty twelve, personally, I was kind of going
through this life crisis, this both faith and personal crisis.
You know, where you just you just don't know what
your mark is on this world. You don't know if
this is the job you need to be in, if
(01:32):
this is a faith you should believe in Am I
being a good dad?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Am I? You know?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Am I providing everything for my family? And at the
time in my church service, I was what was called
the young Men's President, like a youth pastor, and the
young Men's President is responsible for the spiritual growth and
the activity of the young men's program, which was boys
(01:59):
ages twelve to sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
At that time, the.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Church's activity program we followed was the Boy Scout, So
I was kind of the leader over the Boy Scout leaders.
And one day we were sitting with the other church
auxiliary leaders and talking about the needs of not just
the congregation but other people within the community. And there
was one family particular that was talked about.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
They were the local school bus driver. She drove bus.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
The father suffered a little bit from some mental health,
so I had a hard time holding down.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
A job and they were just trying to make it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And what was unique about them too, they were just
right downtown Kimberly. They were in some apartment complexes I
didn't even know existed. But what shocked me the most
was they had kids and.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
They were all sleeping on the floor. I'd never heard
of that before.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You know, I always thought, certainly kids have beds and
places to sleep. But when I heard about this, it
just something struck me wrong. I just said, this is wrong,
and I wanted to do something about it. I wanted
to get my scouts involved. I wanted them to get
an Xbox controller out of their hands and get a
(03:23):
drill and a sander in it and teach them skills,
but also the value of giving back and giving back
to maybe even one of their peers in school.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And so I went home after that meeting and measured this.
We had this bunk bed.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
My daughter was sleeping out at the time, and I
measured it and looked at it and said, you know,
I think I could do this. I didn't have any
tools out to borrow my wife's tools.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But it was fun. You know.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We took these boys and put them to work in
my garage, and you know, after three or four days,
lo and behold, we had a finish bunk bed.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And it was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I never saw and all the time I was serving
as a Young Men's President, I never saw the boys
so engaged in an activity.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I mean, it was hard.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's hard enough to get teenage boys off their screens
and They really took.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
After it, and so did I. We just had a
great time.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
But then it came to the night that we were
going to deliver this bed to this family, this bunk bed,
and I I couldn't go. I had to stay back
and clean my garage. And but the all the kids
and their parents went and the other church leaders went
to this family. And the next day I just heard
(04:39):
how amazing it was. The family was so appreciative, the
kids loved it. And what was shocking to me and
great was.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
How my boy scouts loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It was just such a great moment.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I felt a little cheated because I didn't get to go,
but but I got to see the results from the
happy Scouts. Well that night, sitting on the couch, you know,
you have one of these moments, and it was. It
was first week of December, planning for Christmas, figuring out
how we're going to pay for things, and I don't
know it just I had this moment of just despair,
(05:13):
and you know what, what, what is what is this
all about? My kids are here complaining about the presence
they're not going to get because I told them not.
And you know, as a father, I should be providing
for him, but I want to teach them something I
don't know, you know what, Where's my mark in life?
And this all just seemed to be stirring around in
(05:34):
my brain.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And then I thought I.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Felt so much joy and happiness.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
When I was building that bunk bed with my Scouts,
that I want that with my family. I want these
these kids of mine to appreciate what they have but also.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Learn the joy of giving back.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And so I remember I just got up off the couch,
walked out to the garage. Everybody's going, where's dad going?
And I said, you know what, I've got some left
over wood. We're gonna build another bed, and you're gonna
come help me. I had no clue who to give
it to. I just I remember thinking, okay, I does
(06:13):
anybody know anybody that has a child sleeping all the floor, because.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I sure didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And it was suggested to me to put it on
Facebook in one of these little bicell trade groups, and
so that's what I did. I was a little hesitant
at first, because I'm pretty sure, you know, you put
something on one of those sites is free. It doesn't
matter what it is, you're gonna get all sorts of
people that want it.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
But what happened was quite different than what I expected.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Although we did get some people's requests, I got more
people that wanted to help out. And I labeled it
as you know, hey, this is a family Christmas project.
We just wanted to help a family out with a bed,
so if you know of any kids that are sleeping
on the floor, let us know. But I got more
people saying, oh my gosh, that's great. How can I help?
Can I bring some quilts and pillows? It was just
(07:01):
really neat to see the community come alive.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
That was shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But what hit me the most is I did end
up talking to a good friend of mine, to Nil Clarridge,
who's working with was working with a homeless transition type agency,
and she had this family.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When we come back more of Luke Michaelson's story and
the ministry he started here on Our American Stories Folks,
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the Our American Stories family. If you
agree that America is a good and great country, please
(07:42):
make a donation a monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters.
Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
(08:09):
we continue with our American Stories and with Luke Michaelson,
the founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Let's pick up
where we last left off. Year's Luke.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I called my Hailey story.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So Haley and her mom had been living in a car.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Hailey was six years old, never had a bed, been
sleeping in the backseat of her mom's car, and they
just got a home. And I thought, oh my gosh,
this is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted for
this Christmas gift. And so me and a buddy went
out to this house to deliver this first bed. And
as we walked in the door, you know, I had
(08:51):
seen I'd seen poverty before, but I hadn't seen it
through the.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Eyes of a child.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And this child, you wouldn't been able to tell that
she's you know, she's she's this destitute. She was so
happy she had a house, but the only thing in
the house was a can of soup sitting on a
hot plate that was resting on a milk carton one
of those crates, and that was it. That was the
only thing in the house. But she was so excited.
(09:21):
I you know, met the ma and met her and
I said, show me where your bedroom is, and she
pulled me back into her bedroom. Never had one before.
And when I walked into this room, boy, there's a
room that you I'm sure you could probably see in
your mind, you know, holes in the carpet and wallpaper ripped.
But what was the most shocking thing to me, and
(09:43):
to this day, I just, I just it'll stick with
me forever, is this pile of clothes that were sitting
in the corner. And that's where little Haley slept. She'd
come home from school and put her pjs on and
sleep on her clothes and then and then put her
school clothes, go on in the morning and go to school.
And it just to look at this happy child, I'm sorry,
(10:11):
and then to see the conditions she was sleeping in,
I was overcome with joy.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
That we were bringing her a bed.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so we brought this bed in and uh, you know,
of course in pieces and as we started assembling it.
You could see her trying to figure it out what
we were doing, and then once once she realized it
was a bed, she just erupted, grabbing the bed, grabbing us,
hugging us, hugging the bed, kissing the bed. I'd never
seen that before. It was just a overwhelming feeling of
(10:51):
bringing a child something that they they love. So it's
kind of like, you know Christmas morning, when you when
you bring your child to their favorite present. That's close
to how it felt, but far more emotional for me.
And then to look over and see this mom of
six years trying to trying to provide for her daughter,
(11:15):
tears running down her face. And I was raised by
a single mom too, so it really touched me knowing
that she struggled mentally and probably physically to try to
get this child the best care.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That she deserves. And you know, the car was the
best she could do.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
At the time, and now her daughter has a bed,
a mattress, a comfortable place to sleep.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
It was just it was just overwhelming. I remember driving home.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It was about a half hour from where I lived,
and me and my friend Jordan really didn't say much
to each other. I mean, It was kind of did
that just happen? It was amazing, And I remember about
the time we got home, I thought, you know what,
for the for the few hours and a few days.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
That that took me and my family to do and.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Solve a problem like that, that was well worth my time.
No kid was going to sleep on the floor in
my town if I had anything.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
To do with it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And that was kind of the motto I lived by.
The Saturday afternoon football games or the fishing that I
did quite often just didn't seem near as important, near
as fun, near as fulfilling as it used to be.
I wanted to build beds, and so.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So we decided we were going to build as many beds.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
As we could that Christmas holiday. And I remember my
wife said, you know, well you got to call it something.
And I said, well, how about beds for babes? First
of all, she said, no, that's not a very good
Google search, by the way. So I said, well what
do we call it then? And she said, well, how
about sleeping heavenly peace? And you know, Christmas time and
silent night? And it was just perfect. It was exactly
(12:59):
what we wanted to leave the child in. Was something
that they could sleep in peace with and so so
we called it sleep in Heavenly Peace ASHP. That year
we took our whole Christmas fund and that's what we did,
and I landed at Low's store. Managers says, you know what,
(13:21):
I love this project, what you're doing. You can have
fifty percent off anything you buy, and so of course
we bought some drills and some hardware, and of course
would and we ended up able to build a total
of twenty two beds that Christmas, and all delivered them
all before before Christmas came. And many many times have
I heard that a bed for a child at that
(13:44):
time of year was the only Christmas present that they
were going to get. We built twenty five beds the
next year, and then fifty the year after that, and
it just doubled every year. But twenty fifteen we became
a nonprofit and it was crazy. We built one hundred
and sixty beds something like that, and it just the
more we built, the more people found out, and the
(14:05):
more people found out, the more they wanted to do it.
Then all of a sudden we had friends in other
states and people that didn't know us in other states
that wanted to do the same thing. So we started
putting them on as chapters and teaching them how we're
doing it. And then I got a call, actually it
was an email about this agency in New York that
(14:26):
wanted to do an article on us and wanted to
fly all the way from New York to Twin Falls,
idoh and do this magazine article on us.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And I thought that was kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Okay, great, well lo and behold.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Everybody else knew, but I didn't know that it was
this little Facebook watch series called Returning the Favor, which
isn't so little, and the main host was micro Dirty
Jobs guy, and so he came out and surprised us
with a space that we desperately needed as we were
building beds, garages. We needed the space, and they provided
(15:03):
a space for us for three years. But more importantly,
that episode was viewed by ten million plus people. And
when this hit me, even work, even that life plan
didn't seem as important to me, and so so I quit.
(15:28):
I didn't have a job at the time. I didn't
know what I was gonna do. I took a huge
like a huge pay.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Cut, but really was it was walking into the unknown.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
But it didn't matter, like I didn't care whether I
was gonna live in a shed or really have to
go without, because my joy did not come from the
number of zeros behind my paycheck, but it came from
the number of kids that I could help.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Looking back at it right now, I just cringe at
the thought that I would have ever considered anything else.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I think year to date, we're probably over six thousand
people that have requested to become a chapter for their
own area, and now we're in four different countries and
we build over fifty thousand beds a year, built and
delivered to kids.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
All across the country.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Twelve years ago, if you told me I was going
to build beds for kids as my goal in life
and purpose in life, I would have I probably would
have laughed.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It wasn't anything on my radar.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But it just took one child and one situation of
one family to see just how much I could make
a difference in their life by just putting something together
as simple as a bed.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And now it's my whole life.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to
Luke Myicholson for sharing his story of how Sleep in
Heavenly Piece was born. And it all started with that
little girl who was sleeping in the back seat of
her mother's car, and the joy he felt delivering that
bed in that house. She'd finally had an overwhelming feeling.
(17:17):
He described the joy he felt. And soon those Saturday
football games and fishing more, and it's important to him
is making more beds and feeling that feeling again, And
pretty soon he turned over his entire Christmas fun built
twenty two beds, then twenty five, then the nonprofit forms,
then Mike Rowe comes in, and then of course he
(17:38):
gives it all up, and now there are six thousand
chapters and he's making fifty thousand beds a year. A
pure and beautiful American dream story, the story of Sleep
in Heavenly Peace. Luke Michaelson's story here on Our American
Story
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
The search for the Our American Stories podcast go to
the iHeartRadio app, to Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Up Next to the story of an ordinary
man who did something extraordinary when he found out about
(00:31):
an issue not very many people think about child bedlessness,
here's Luke Michaelson of Sleep and Heavenly Peace to tell
his story of selflessness. Our words, by the way, not his.
Take it away.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Luke, you know, I'm from a small town Kimberly, Idaho,
thirty seven hundred people. I went to school there, graduated there,
and built my family up, and I had my.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Whole career lined out. I worked for a local water treatment.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Company and was going to be buying it and had
my retirement set.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I mean it was. I was all planned out.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And in twenty twelve, personally, I was kind of going
through this life crisis, this both faith and personal crisis.
You know, where you just you just don't know what
your mark is on this world. You don't know if
this is the job you need to be in, if
(01:32):
this is a faith you should believe in Am I
being a good dad?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Am I? You know?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Am I providing everything for my family? And at the
time in my church service, I was what was called
the young Men's President, like a youth pastor, and the
young Men's President is responsible for the spiritual growth and
the activity of the young men's program, which was boys
(01:59):
ages twelve to sixteen seventeen.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
At that time, the.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Church's activity program we followed was the Boy Scout, So
I was kind of the leader over the Boy Scout leaders.
And one day we were sitting with the other church
auxiliary leaders and talking about the needs of not just
the congregation but other people within the community. And there
was one family particular that was talked about.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
They were the local school bus driver. She drove bus.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
The father suffered a little bit from some mental health,
so I had a hard time holding down.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
A job and they were just trying to make it.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And what was unique about them too, they were just
right downtown Kimberly. They were in some apartment complexes I
didn't even know existed. But what shocked me the most
was they had kids and.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
They were all sleeping on the floor. I'd never heard
of that before.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
You know, I always thought, certainly kids have beds and
places to sleep. But when I heard about this, it
just something struck me wrong. I just said, this is wrong,
and I wanted to do something about it. I wanted
to get my scouts involved. I wanted them to get
an Xbox controller out of their hands and get a
(03:23):
drill and a sander in it and teach them skills,
but also the value of giving back and giving back
to maybe even one of their peers in school.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
And so I went home after that meeting and measured this.
We had this bunk bed.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
My daughter was sleeping out at the time, and I
measured it and looked at it and said, you know,
I think I could do this. I didn't have any
tools out to borrow my wife's tools.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But it was fun. You know.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
We took these boys and put them to work in
my garage, and you know, after three or four days,
lo and behold, we had a finish bunk bed.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
And it was so much fun.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I never saw and all the time I was serving
as a Young Men's President, I never saw the boys
so engaged in an activity.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I mean, it was hard.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
It's hard enough to get teenage boys off their screens
and They really took.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
After it, and so did I. We just had a
great time.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
But then it came to the night that we were
going to deliver this bed to this family, this bunk bed,
and I I couldn't go. I had to stay back
and clean my garage. And but the all the kids
and their parents went and the other church leaders went
to this family. And the next day I just heard
(04:39):
how amazing it was. The family was so appreciative, the
kids loved it. And what was shocking to me and
great was.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
How my boy scouts loved it.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
It was just such a great moment.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I felt a little cheated because I didn't get to go,
but but I got to see the results from the
happy Scouts. Well that night, sitting on the couch, you know,
you have one of these moments, and it was. It
was first week of December, planning for Christmas, figuring out
how we're going to pay for things, and I don't
know it just I had this moment of just despair,
(05:13):
and you know what, what, what is what is this
all about? My kids are here complaining about the presence
they're not going to get because I told them not.
And you know, as a father, I should be providing
for him, but I want to teach them something I
don't know, you know what, Where's my mark in life?
And this all just seemed to be stirring around in
(05:34):
my brain.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And then I thought I.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Felt so much joy and happiness.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
When I was building that bunk bed with my Scouts,
that I want that with my family. I want these
these kids of mine to appreciate what they have but also.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Learn the joy of giving back.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And so I remember I just got up off the couch,
walked out to the garage. Everybody's going, where's dad going?
And I said, you know what, I've got some left
over wood. We're gonna build another bed, and you're gonna
come help me. I had no clue who to give
it to. I just I remember thinking, okay, I does
(06:13):
anybody know anybody that has a child sleeping all the floor, because.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I sure didn't.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
And it was suggested to me to put it on
Facebook in one of these little bicell trade groups, and
so that's what I did. I was a little hesitant
at first, because I'm pretty sure, you know, you put
something on one of those sites is free. It doesn't
matter what it is, you're gonna get all sorts of
people that want it.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
But what happened was quite different than what I expected.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Although we did get some people's requests, I got more
people that wanted to help out. And I labeled it
as you know, hey, this is a family Christmas project.
We just wanted to help a family out with a bed,
so if you know of any kids that are sleeping
on the floor, let us know. But I got more
people saying, oh my gosh, that's great. How can I help?
Can I bring some quilts and pillows? It was just
(07:01):
really neat to see the community come alive.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
That was shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
But what hit me the most is I did end
up talking to a good friend of mine, to Nil Clarridge,
who's working with was working with a homeless transition type agency,
and she had this family.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When we come back more of Luke Michaelson's story and
the ministry he started here on Our American Stories Folks,
if you love the great American stories we tell and
love America like we do, we're asking you to become
a part of the Our American Stories family. If you
agree that America is a good and great country, please
(07:42):
make a donation a monthly gift of seventeen dollars and
seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters.
Go to our American Stories dot com now and go
to the donate button and help us keep the great
American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot Com. And
(08:09):
we continue with our American Stories and with Luke Michaelson,
the founder of Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Let's pick up
where we last left off. Year's Luke.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I called my Hailey story.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
So Haley and her mom had been living in a car.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Hailey was six years old, never had a bed, been
sleeping in the backseat of her mom's car, and they
just got a home. And I thought, oh my gosh,
this is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted for
this Christmas gift. And so me and a buddy went
out to this house to deliver this first bed. And
as we walked in the door, you know, I had
(08:51):
seen I'd seen poverty before, but I hadn't seen it
through the.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
Eyes of a child.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
And this child, you wouldn't been able to tell that
she's you know, she's she's this destitute. She was so
happy she had a house, but the only thing in
the house was a can of soup sitting on a
hot plate that was resting on a milk carton one
of those crates, and that was it. That was the
only thing in the house. But she was so excited.
(09:21):
I you know, met the ma and met her and
I said, show me where your bedroom is, and she
pulled me back into her bedroom. Never had one before.
And when I walked into this room, boy, there's a
room that you I'm sure you could probably see in
your mind, you know, holes in the carpet and wallpaper ripped.
But what was the most shocking thing to me, and
(09:43):
to this day, I just, I just it'll stick with
me forever, is this pile of clothes that were sitting
in the corner. And that's where little Haley slept. She'd
come home from school and put her pjs on and
sleep on her clothes and then and then put her
school clothes, go on in the morning and go to school.
And it just to look at this happy child, I'm sorry,
(10:11):
and then to see the conditions she was sleeping in,
I was overcome with joy.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
That we were bringing her a bed.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so we brought this bed in and uh, you know,
of course in pieces and as we started assembling it.
You could see her trying to figure it out what
we were doing, and then once once she realized it
was a bed, she just erupted, grabbing the bed, grabbing us,
hugging us, hugging the bed, kissing the bed. I'd never
seen that before. It was just a overwhelming feeling of
(10:51):
bringing a child something that they they love. So it's
kind of like, you know Christmas morning, when you when
you bring your child to their favorite present. That's close
to how it felt, but far more emotional for me.
And then to look over and see this mom of
six years trying to trying to provide for her daughter,
(11:15):
tears running down her face. And I was raised by
a single mom too, so it really touched me knowing
that she struggled mentally and probably physically to try to
get this child the best care.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That she deserves. And you know, the car was the
best she could do.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
At the time, and now her daughter has a bed,
a mattress, a comfortable place to sleep.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
It was just it was just overwhelming. I remember driving home.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
It was about a half hour from where I lived,
and me and my friend Jordan really didn't say much
to each other. I mean, It was kind of did
that just happen? It was amazing, And I remember about
the time we got home, I thought, you know what,
for the for the few hours and a few days.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
That that took me and my family to do and.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Solve a problem like that, that was well worth my time.
No kid was going to sleep on the floor in
my town if I had anything.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
To do with it.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
And that was kind of the motto I lived by.
The Saturday afternoon football games or the fishing that I
did quite often just didn't seem near as important, near
as fun, near as fulfilling as it used to be.
I wanted to build beds, and so.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So we decided we were going to build as many beds.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
As we could that Christmas holiday. And I remember my
wife said, you know, well you got to call it something.
And I said, well, how about beds for babes? First
of all, she said, no, that's not a very good
Google search, by the way. So I said, well what
do we call it then? And she said, well, how
about sleeping heavenly peace? And you know, Christmas time and
silent night? And it was just perfect. It was exactly
(12:59):
what we wanted to leave the child in. Was something
that they could sleep in peace with and so so
we called it sleep in Heavenly Peace ASHP. That year
we took our whole Christmas fund and that's what we did,
and I landed at Low's store. Managers says, you know what,
(13:21):
I love this project, what you're doing. You can have
fifty percent off anything you buy, and so of course
we bought some drills and some hardware, and of course
would and we ended up able to build a total
of twenty two beds that Christmas, and all delivered them
all before before Christmas came. And many many times have
I heard that a bed for a child at that
(13:44):
time of year was the only Christmas present that they
were going to get. We built twenty five beds the
next year, and then fifty the year after that, and
it just doubled every year. But twenty fifteen we became
a nonprofit and it was crazy. We built one hundred
and sixty beds something like that, and it just the
more we built, the more people found out, and the
(14:05):
more people found out, the more they wanted to do it.
Then all of a sudden we had friends in other
states and people that didn't know us in other states
that wanted to do the same thing. So we started
putting them on as chapters and teaching them how we're
doing it. And then I got a call, actually it
was an email about this agency in New York that
(14:26):
wanted to do an article on us and wanted to
fly all the way from New York to Twin Falls,
idoh and do this magazine article on us.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
And I thought that was kind of weird.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Okay, great, well lo and behold.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Everybody else knew, but I didn't know that it was
this little Facebook watch series called Returning the Favor, which
isn't so little, and the main host was micro Dirty
Jobs guy, and so he came out and surprised us
with a space that we desperately needed as we were
building beds, garages. We needed the space, and they provided
(15:03):
a space for us for three years. But more importantly,
that episode was viewed by ten million plus people. And
when this hit me, even work, even that life plan
didn't seem as important to me, and so so I quit.
(15:28):
I didn't have a job at the time. I didn't
know what I was gonna do. I took a huge
like a huge pay.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Cut, but really was it was walking into the unknown.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
But it didn't matter, like I didn't care whether I
was gonna live in a shed or really have to
go without, because my joy did not come from the
number of zeros behind my paycheck, but it came from
the number of kids that I could help.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Looking back at it right now, I just cringe at
the thought that I would have ever considered anything else.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I think year to date, we're probably over six thousand
people that have requested to become a chapter for their
own area, and now we're in four different countries and
we build over fifty thousand beds a year, built and
delivered to kids.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
All across the country.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Twelve years ago, if you told me I was going
to build beds for kids as my goal in life
and purpose in life, I would have I probably would
have laughed.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
It wasn't anything on my radar.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
But it just took one child and one situation of
one family to see just how much I could make
a difference in their life by just putting something together
as simple as a bed.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
And now it's my whole life.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
And a terrific job on the editing, production and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery and a special thanks to
Luke Myicholson for sharing his story of how Sleep in
Heavenly Piece was born. And it all started with that
little girl who was sleeping in the back seat of
her mother's car, and the joy he felt delivering that
bed in that house. She'd finally had an overwhelming feeling.
(17:17):
He described the joy he felt. And soon those Saturday
football games and fishing more, and it's important to him
is making more beds and feeling that feeling again, And
pretty soon he turned over his entire Christmas fun built
twenty two beds, then twenty five, then the nonprofit forms,
then Mike Rowe comes in, and then of course he
(17:38):
gives it all up, and now there are six thousand
chapters and he's making fifty thousand beds a year. A
pure and beautiful American dream story, the story of Sleep
in Heavenly Peace. Luke Michaelson's story here on Our American
Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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