Did you know?
o Open House Ministries provides shelter for up to 107 people every night.
o Through the Giving Back program, which has residents help with maintenance, shelter costs are kept to $14.36 per bed per night, compared with the $60 national average.
o The average family stays at the shelter for four to six months.
SOURCE: Open House Ministries
Before he came to Open House Ministries, Don Aakervik was a homeless drug addict in Seattle. Now, the 49-year-old is a homeowner and nursing student.
Friday evening, he and many other former residents returned to the shelter in downtown Vancouver for the second annual reunion with staff.
The celebration doubled as a retirement party for longtime chaplain Aaron Knapp. He spent 13 years supporting and encouraging residents, whether in class, in church, in court or in jail.
Did you know?
o Open House Ministries provides shelter for up to 107 people every night.
o Through the Giving Back program, which has residents help with maintenance, shelter costs are kept to $14.36 per bed per night, compared with the $60 national average.
o The average family stays at the shelter for four to six months.
SOURCE: Open House Ministries
“He can cry with you. He can laugh with you. He has such a sensitivity to what people need to hear,” said Claudia Dalton, board president at the shelter, before the large crowd that came to Friday’s event, a luau.
In February, during his 50th year in ministry, Knapp retired but continues volunteering at the shelter. Over his career, he’s experienced what he called “serendipities,” where he realized he helped someone have a better life.
“That was pretty rewarding,” he said.
While people ate a luau dinner, others lauded what Knapp did for them — made them feel important, supported them and convinced them that working hard could lead to a better life.
Aakervik, who worked with Knapp, took some of his classes while at Open House. He stayed there with his then-girlfriend, volunteered at church, and eventually got a weekend job as a security guard. He and his girlfriend got married in the annex building and his wife got a job as a receptionist.
“Once we came here and got enlightened … everything started going right for us,” Aakervik said.
He looks to someday be a nurse who specializes in wound, ostomy and continence care.
“That’s what I’m shooting for,” he said.
Some former residents, such as Renee Stevens, went on to become staff at Open House. A former drug addict, the 44-year-old came to Open House at a friend’s suggestion in 1999. She returned a couple years later.
“I wasn’t judged when I came back. I was a work in progress,” she said.
She’s since then gotten sober, earned her paralegal degree and remarried. While working toward her bachelor’s degree in human development at Washington State University Vancouver, she became a full-time case manager at Open House. She said it’s amazing to watch residents become self-sufficient.
“I went through the same thing they did,” she said.
