One morning in October of 2021 I woke up and God said, "It's time for a thrift store again." Well, had already done that twice in Liberty, plus a "Free Store" that no one understood. We told people, "Just take whatever you like and leave whatever you think it's worth in the fishbowl on the counter." People couldn't process that. So we told them we're a thrift store where everything is 50 cents. Well, they thought THAT was amazing! Whatever.
On that morning, we had NO money, no first and last, no security deposit. We're barely making our monthly bills as it is with the farm and ten mobile homes. But the Lord said, so we go looking for possible spaces in Excelsior Springs (Liberty is WAY too expensive!). We look at two or three places that won't work. Then I stop by a space next to the big farm store that I know used to be a thrift store but has been closed for about three years. The space is about 3,000 square feet, but it's in a really good retail spot in the retail district, next to the big "farm and home" store and the DMV. We call the real estate manager whose number is in the window and he comes out to meet us and show the space.
It's just a long narrow rectangular space with a bathroom and a little warehouse and a small office in the back. But as we go to the back we see a hole in the drywall and bent metal studs where you can slip through the wall into a cavernous warehouse that wraps all around the back of this old building (that was a Walmart when I was in high school in Excelsior). Altogether it was over 15,000 square feet! There is a back garage door with a dock and ramp up to the double doors. (Here's a tour of it empty.) We told him our vision was to be a community storehouse, to collect donations and get them to the folks in need, food pantry and more - and that we had no money. He said, "Well, nobody is starting businesses during this Covid thing and I like what you're doing. How about I just charge you for the front, give you the back for free, and if you take it As Is, I'll give you four months free to get you going and no security deposit." Shoot! I know favor when I see it! So we went home to pray about it. It was still going to be $3500 per month on top of our already stretched budget of about $8000 per month that we had to believe in faith would be provided every month.
We went home and prayed and within an hour God said, "I'll pay for it. Sign the lease." So I called and told him to write it up, that we would take it. Two (2) hours later I get an email (unsolicited) from a logistics center on the other side of Kansas City offering to donate 500 pallets of paper towels and toilet paper. That's twenty (20) full semi-trailers! I think it's bogus and text the guy and voicemail on this phone. If this is for real, yeah, we have 350,000 square feet in the cave and a new warehouse with 15,000 square feet fully intending to collect corporate and personal donations and use them for ministry! About four hours later the guy calls me. "Yes, we're for real. It's not a scam. I work for a large telecom that just merged with another large telecom and we are paying monthly for space in this fulfillment center and we'd like to just donate it all. You'd be a big answer to prayer because I can't find anyone that will take it all. Oh, there's some other stuff, too. I'll send you a spreadsheet in the morning." Turns out that it wasn't 600 pallets, it was 1700 pallets! Sanitizer, hand soap, spray bottles, disinfectant, goggles, gloves, aprons, and more! And he wanted it all out in 30 days.
So within 48 hours of God saying and us looking at it, I have to buy a forklift and rent two big yellow trucks and get a new dock plate. We get a key to the building and are moving four truckloads per day in - before the lease is even signed! I'm selling paper towels and toilet paper to wholesalers out of the back of the truck on the way home to pay for the gas and truck rental! In the end, after eight weeks of picking up twice a day in two giant box trucks, we picked up 900 pallets total (35 semi-trailer loads) and gave them a tax donation receipt for $3,000,000! If you set your hand to care for the poor, you can't build barns faster then God can fill them! (See the video of it partially full here.) So finally, about the first week of December we opened the CitySaver Thrift store. And then personal donations started flooding in!
Now it's January of 2026, the store has been open four years. The first year we instituted our Free Room where you could just take whatever you wanted for free. The second year we took our big tent and put it in the grass out front over the 4th of July and had our "Week of Freedom" where everything in the tent was FREE 24/7. It helped us move stuff out and clear warehouse space. It wasn't trash. The third year we did our "Month of Freedom" and had the tent up for all of July - full of free stuff restocked daily. In 2025 we did FOUR "Months of Freedom" under the tent in May, June, August and October. In January of 2025 we also started renting the smaller space next door as our "Event Center" where we have cooking facilities and have used it for our gatherings, rented to folks for birthdays/weddings/memorials, but also as a "warming center" in the winter to get folks off the streets before they freeze.
We also have teams that go out every day and pickup donations from restaurants and grocery stores. At the front of our thrift store are tables and fridges where folks can just take whatever they need. Last year the retail value of the food we gave away was over $2,500,000. Our model is simple, if you need a coat we'll give you one. If you WANT a leather Chiefs jacket or some Callaway golf clubs, then we'll sell them to you at a great price and use the money to give away more stuff. In 2023 we started selling discount groceries from wherever I could find bargains - usually bent cans or discontinued product or near/at date stuff. We registered to accept food stamps. In the Spring of 2024 we started selling discount frozen meats. We have a number of regular people that come every day. Many that will start to cry instantly if you ask them how we've been a blessing to them. I think that's what Jesus would want.
