The Sweet Sleep Story
In July 2003, Jen Gash was part of a mission team working with orphans in the Eastern European country of Moldova. Her first image of the orphanage came in seeing a pile of mattresses stacked in a corner. The mattresses were only about one-inch in thickness. The smell coming from the mattresses was overwhelming. Jen would later learn the mattresses were 17–47 years old and the 700 children growing up in Moldova’s largest orphanage had only 430 beds and mattresses to share—meaning many children slept two-to-a-bed.
Jen’s heart grew heavier as she sat with the children on their beds each day. Their exhausted metal beds were only the size of a cot. The tired metal springs were sprung and almost every bed sagged in the middle, making it much like a metal hammock. Many children did not even have mattresses and used old wool blankets as a barrier to the harsh metal springs.
Throughout the week, Jen prayed earnestly as she sought to understand what she felt God was asking of her. One evening, during the team’s prayer time, someone prayed for the children to have “sweet sleep” and Jen began to cry. She sensed God confirm a call in her life to somehow work to provide for this specific need of the children she had fallen in love with during the week. In her own prayer time that evening, God brought those words back to her as He continued to affirm His intentions for His children to sleep sweetly on mattresses and beds that would no longer harm them.
On the plane home, Jen decided to read some scripture. She reached for her Bible and opened right to Proverbs, where one particular verse seemed to “jump” off the page. The verse was Proverbs 3:24: “When you lie down you will not be afraid; when you lie down your sleep will be sweet.”
Once back in Nashville, Jen began sharing her vision of “a bed for every head” and immediately received Sweet Sleep’s first donation.
The rest of the story is ministry.
