'Gleaning for Jesus' Shows Faith in Action

A furniture and appliance repair specialist.

An interior decorator.

A professional social worker.

An evangelist.

Somehow they all go together.

In a nation that struggles to find answers to poverty, Leslie offers an original approach to uplift troubled young single mothers.

She spies discarded household items on street curbs, or obtains donations. She gathers her 5-foot-2, 115-pound frame to load the items onto an old truck.

"People think I'm a junk lady," says Leslie, a youthful 57, with a modest laugh.

But she has a strategy. She repairs everything into clean and working order, and heads for a client's apartment. The twosome work as a team to perform a top-to-bottom makeover - not just the basics such as a couch or a washing machine, but pictures on the walls and vases on the end tables.

Leslie gains the client's trust in a manner that a regular counselor might not, opening the door for the subtle encouragement that she mixes with prayers and hugs.

Annie, for example, is a 20-year-old mother of two who is overjoyed with her new surroundings but speaks of deeper thoughts.

"Leslie has helped me learn to love my kids more," the shy young lady tells a visitor.

Leslie later has moist eyes.

"I'm surprised Annie would tell you that," she says, "but it shows the impact."

Marie, 23, has a 3-year-old son. She has struggled with crack cocaine. A month ago, she had asked Leslie to serve as caretaker for her food stamps so that she would not sell them for crack. This month, she has suffered a fallback.

"I'm sorry," she tells Leslie, who responds not with a lecture but with empathy. The two hold hands for a quiet prayer.

"It's tough for Marie," Leslie says later, "but Marie will never sell any of the furniture that we have given her. Never. Hopefully next month she will resume giving me her stamps to keep for her."

GLEANING FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Leslie's 18-year-old effort, "Gleaning for Jesus," is named for the Bible's story about collecting food overlooked in the regular harvest. In her case, the crop is household castoffs.

Clients need not know about her four-year college degree. In fact, she prefers that a young mom view her simply as a helping friend in jeans and a sweatshirt who is dragging a mattress through the door.

Their troubles may range from budgeting to parenting to drugs.

"We need other ways to reach them," Leslie says. "I grew up in Saginaw's projects with no pictures on the walls, no carpeting, just a cold concrete floor. This contributed to a negative view that I carried all the way into my young adult years.

"When we do a makeover and transform a house into a true home - a true home like I never had - it affects someone's whole outlook. That's what is happening with Annie, and hopefully with Maria."

Retiree George Barrett, a long-time Gleaning volunteer and donor, remains fascinated.

"Leslie's approach is ingenious," he says. "She takes these items and uses them as part of her counseling, but to the people on the receiving end, it doesn't seem like counseling."

"OOO, OO, THERE'S A NICE CHAIR"

Leslie was in her late 30s, divorced with three grown children, when she made a life-changing decision to become a social worker. Her college work-study assignment in 1990 was with the Saginaw Red Cross, which is the first responder when house fires leave families homeless. She had experience working in a furniture and appliance repair shop, and suddenly she had clients who had lost all of their possessions. The idea clicked: Repaired household items + social work = Gleaning for Jesus.

She named her old blue van "Ruth" in tribute to the biblical heroine known for gleaning. Her first efforts for her Red Cross clients were at a true scavenger level, scouring Saginaw's curbsides. A sofa might be collapsed and seem worthless, for example, but she would use the good vinyl to cover the seats of some beat-up kitchen chairs.

"She would be driving along and say, 'Ooo, ooo, there's a nice chair. Ooo, ooo, there's a good table,'" says Mark Butler, her brother, mimicking her excited reactions. "She would always stop, even on Sundays in our church clothes."

In 1991, Leslie landed her current social work position with single-parent families. She continued her "gleaning" concept.

Gleaning for Jesus grew so fast that Leslie eventually became more selective. She now works mostly with "as-is" items that are donated directly, rather than snatched from street curbs.

"But I'll still stop," she says. "The other day, I saw a pair of end tables that I just had
to grab. I still have the strength, although now with arthritis it's harder to get a grip."

Some moms struggle more than others. She recently donated a kitchen table at an apartment where a 4-year-old boy was eating on the floor.

"He grabbed the leg of that table, and he hugged it like a new toy," she says.

GREATER SAGINAW PITCHES IN

Leslie faced a streak of hard luck during the late 1990s. A fire destroyed a former shipping depot where she was storing her goods. Then her trucks coughed and quit, one after another.

She stalled at a busy intersection one day, blocking traffic. Motorists honked and cursed her. At that moment, she considered quitting.

Then an array of sources came to the rescue. She received funds for truck repairs. She reaped an annual grant for a case aide and a pair of part-time collection drivers. A company contributed its former warehouse, complete with a dropoff dock. A roofing manufacturer donated materials and a construction outfit performed the job, allowing Leslie to put her assorted leak buckets aside.

She now has enough space to conduct classes on everything from parenting to sewing. She also has used donated items to convert the former customer service area into a chapel, organizing "gleaned weddings" for three couples who otherwise could have afforded nothing more than an oath with the county magistrate. She even keeps donated bridal dresses and an arbor on hand.

"If anything is the total embodiment of Gleaning for Jesus, it's those weddings," Leslie Bacon says.

"This is more than just picking up stuff off the curb. There's a motive behind this. There's production. And there are results."