Julie Leikvoll of Chapel Thrift Store in Little Falls, Minn., drops it all when she heard the call to serve
By The Rev. Devlyn Brooks
LITTLE FALLS, Minn. -- On a late Saturday morning in early January, volunteers worked to ready the new Chapel Thrift Store taking root in the former Episcopal Church of Our Savior, located at 113 Fourth St. N.E. in this central Minnesota city.
One volunteer sat behind a rolltop desk in the little entryway, making sense of the contents on the desktop and the shelves around her. Other volunteers down a short hallway that lead to a showroom of knicknacks, kitchen utensils, kids toys and other assorted items were busy adding prices to inventory and finding places on shelves for them. Another volunteer was busy hanging decorative wall hangings in the long hallway that led from the entryway up into what was the sanctuary of the church.
In the sanctuary, thrift store owner Julie Leikvoll held court behind a pair of matching glass-encased display cases the likes you would have seen in an old five and dime store jewelry department. She simultaneously fielded questions from visitors while pointing out “can’t miss” bargain items to other shoppers roaming the former sanctuary and church altar.
All around one can see racks and racks of clothing, household items, shoes, toys and antique items, filling mismatched shelves and old clothing store racks that form makeshift rows of merchandise up and down where the church’s pews once resided.
Only a couple of months old, Leikvoll said her shop was still taking form, but the fact that they were able to open at all was a divine miracle. And the number of people she’s already been able to help is staggering. The need across so many economic levels is soul crushing, Leikvoll said. Unprecedented numbers of folks come to her in need of clothing, shoes, household items to set up a new home.
And no one is turned away. … After all, that was the point of purchasing the church, and setting up Chapel Thrift Store: To benefit those who are without.
This story however doesn’t begin here in this new church setting though.
To understand just how miraculous the opening of Chapel Thrift Store is, we have to step back in time to when Leikvoll says she was called by God to serve folks in need.
So, let’s rewind four years back to the early days of the COVID pandemic when Leikvoll, a veteran licensed independent clinical social worker of 30 years, could anticipate the wave of need this emergency was going to create.
Having participated in former President Barack Obama’s emergency preparedness initiative, Leikvoll said her experience gave her the sense that because of the pandemic her local community was going to see increased mental health strains, more joblessness, domestic abuse issues, homelessness and even those in need of food support. And so, listening to God calling her, Leikvoll said she retired from her professional job so that she could help provide relief to those in need however she could.
“The idea of walking away from my career into the unknown was really a leap of faith,” Leikvoll said. “I spent a lot of time in prayer and said, ‘God what do you want me to do?’ He put it on my heart to quit my job and help people.”
Her initial efforts started with first helping a friend liquidate her estate from a home she owned on Lake Minnetonka in the Twin Cities. Leikvoll says she brought home the furniture and other household goods, and set up a rolling yard sale at a rental house property she owns in Little Falls. Every morning, she -- and eventually some volunteers -- would set up tables in the front yard, and offer the goods at reduced prices, or even free to those in dire need.
And the people came!
Leikvoll said they were serving local families each day that needed help with essential household items. Additionally, word spread around town, and other local folks who couldn’t drop off their donations at the local thrift store because it was too full, started dropping off their donations at Leikvoll’s yard sale.
Also during this time, she was utilizing her friends’ resources to help people in need buy back their items they lost from rental storage facilities because they were behind in rent, and then even helped those folks to sell the items on her yard sale if they needed.
She said she and her team of volunteers assisted others in any way possible.
All summer long, Leikvoll said her and her merry band of volunteers would unpack everything in the morning, sell what they could at discounted price, give away things to those in need, and even barter with those who wanted. It was a very large effort, but one Leikvoll said she knew was holy.
The atmosphere was so busy that Leikvoll and her volunteers took to calling the effort their “Corona Coaster Sale,” in honor of the ups and the downs they experienced every day. She said the first summer was quite eye-opening.
The following summer, in 2021, Leikvoll decided to move the ongoing yard sale to her home property, which is located just a couple of miles north of Little Falls on five acres, where she said there was more room to operate. On the property were empty quonsets with electricity that allowed her to create a bit of a warehouse for goods such as clothing, shoes and household items. And, setting up limited hours, she welcomed all comers to her new “thrift store,” and gave to them whatever they needed.
In those extra sheds, on that property in rural Morrison County, Leikvoll created the “Labor of Love” thrift store, a ministry that allowed people in need to pay what they could, and if they couldn’t pay, they still could take whatever they needed for free.
She said, at first, she intended to operate her charity as a garage sale, but it quickly evolved into a thrift store after community members showed up and showed out, donating thousands of items, including display cases and clothing racks.
She and her volunteers again worked all summer long to provide a place for those in need to come, for those who wanted to donate items to drop them off and a way for those just looking to barter items they didn’t need for ones they did.
Leikvoll said not everyone in town was supportive, however. She received pushback from area elected leaders throughout the year, including threats that county officials would shut down her charity. Leaning on the Holy Spirit, she persevered anyway, but with a lot of sleepless nights.
By winter of 2021-2022, Leikvoll knew she was in this ministry for the long haul. And so in February 2022, with her own money, she built a brand new, heated building on her property to allow her and her volunteers to better organize the Labor of Love ministry. An investment that allowed her and the team for the time being to repackage things in a more orderly manner, and eventually a place for their equipment.
Having no idea her little charity would grow so fast, and learning more about what was expected of charities to operate, Leikvoll applied after the fact for a temporary permit with Morrison County to operate the store in May 2022. While the county ultimately did award the permit, they allowed the store only limited hours of operation during the week, and it didn’t come without a cost. The county fined Leikvoll $750 for applying for an after-the-fact permit to conduct charity, and another $750 for the permit.
“I didn’t know you couldn’t do charity work without a permit,” she said. “How would I?”
Fines and no support from the county elected leaders, however, once again didn’t derail Leikvoll. Undaunted, she said she knew that her Labor of Love ministry wasn’t done. After all, the local need wasn’t going away, and the local government was not stepping up to assist those most in need.
Through it all, Leikvoll and her volunteers persisted, but it wasn’t easy.
Then, in 2023, when Leikvoll was attempting to renew her permit, Morrison County officials denied her non-profit’s permit renewal to stay open on a 4-1 vote. The county board would rule that after reviewing Leikvoll’s Interim Use Permit application, they found that the application did not meet the county’s criteria for approval because the business was no longer a “Home Extended Business” because of the size of the operation and the number of hours Leikvoll was requesting to be open.
Leikvoll tried to fight the county for a while, but eventually found that it was a lost cause. And so, she started casting about for other resolutions to the challenge. After all, the need for such a charity wasn’t going away; rather, it was growing!
“I think there is such a disconnect between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots,’” she said. “So, I asked God, ‘What are you going to do with this?’”
And God answered back that quitting wasn’t an option. … So, beginning in spring 2023, Leikvoll set out to find a new location to continue on with her ministry.
Eventually, the search came to an end after locals Jeff Kruschek, and his wife, Chris Gammon-Kruschek, agreed to sell the decommissioned Episcopal church in downtown Little Falls to the non-profit.
At the time of the sale, the former owners said the only reason they chose to sell was because it was going to be used to house the new “Chapel Thrift Store.” The couple purchased the church in November 2015, shortly after it was going to be decommissioned. While the couple initially planned to turn the church’s newer addition into the office for their real estate company, and to use the sanctuary space as a wedding venue and more, the reality of the church’s space made that unfeasible.
Based on its distinctive gothic-style building design, the Episcopal Church of Our Savior has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980.
“The rest is history, and here we are now in this beautiful chapel!” Leikvoll said from behind her glass counters.
In November, the shop opened with an open house, and they’ve slowly been making the former church feel like home.
Immediately after opening in the church, the Chapel Thrift store and its charitable arm, Labor of Love ministry, served at least 10 families per week. That number has steadily climbed, Leikvoll said, and now they average serving about 15 families per week.
But the community keeps stepping up as well. Leikvoll says the donations keep rolling in, and the customers keep shopping.
Asked what has carried Leikvoll through all of the challenges the past four years, she said it was her desire to answer God’s call, to overcome the hurdles put up by the Devil and the support of the prayer warrior team she assembled at the very beginning of this endeavor.
“If it were not for the fact I was working on behalf of a greater power than I, it would have been easy to quit. You are trying to impact the community, and the Devil’s not happy,” Leikvoll said. “But my job is to be an empty vessel, and let the Holy Spirit work through me. God calls on us to use all the resources we have, and what an honor to be in that position.”
Comments