| One
day Warren was invited to attend a Full Gospel business
meeting. He met a young man who was struggling to develop
a group home program. Dan had temporary access to a deteriorating
farm house, several boxes of packaged Mexican meals and
four people living with him. The house was heated by a
wood stove in the kitchen with winter coming. It was near
a private school that was interested in buying the property
and pressuring the owner to evict the group. The group
had a few steady donations, but weren’t tax exempt.
Dan paid an initial fee of $100.
Although
there were a lot of hopes and the beginnings of a program,
the management skills needed to organize a viable, ongoing
program just weren’t there. Warren helped the group
organize a board of directors, started to develop a fund
raising plan and found a location which would be initially
shared with another group. Then it was time to test reality.
The first test
was to work out the details of sharing the new location.
The demands made by Dan’s group were not reasonable
and this fell through. The second test came at the first
board meeting. The board was ready to begin the first
stages of a serious fund raising campaign. After two hours,
however, Dan was still talking dreams and no meaningful
plans had been made. The board decided not to continue
the program. Dan found a job working in a group home for
mentally retarded clients. We found temporary homes for
the other four people. We got two of them jobs and the
other two entered a program to become nurse aides. Later
Dan wrote us a letter. It was his way of thanking us for
the support he received.
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