Called by Name

Berhanu Didanu was eleven when a neighbor told him something he hadn’t known about his own family: five of the eight children had been taken in off the streets.

A month later, during the family’s Saturday devotion, a woman came through the door weeping and asking for his youngest sister. She had been living on the street when the baby was born. With nowhere to go, she had placed her newborn beside a garbage can and watched from a distance to see who would come. Berhanu’s mother and older sister were the ones who came, bringing the baby home to raise as their own.

“My family didn’t have enough money even for three of us,” Berhanu says. “But they had a big heart for vulnerable people.”

Learning how his brothers and sisters had become part of the family changed the way he understood his parents. He wanted to carry that generosity into his own life.

His wife, Miheret Bune, grew up watching her father open their home to people, too. Under Ethiopia’s communist regime, when churches were shut down, their house became an underground church. Her father fed the believers who traveled there to pray, as well as poor families on their street. When he brought food to prisoners, he took his children along.

“All those things accumulated in my heart,” she says. “When I grow up, I will be like my dad.”

After Bible college, Miheret joined a ministry supporting pastors’ families and helped raise money to keep their children in school. It was on a fundraising trip back to her old college that she and Berhanu got to know each other. They married in Dubai, served there for five years, and had their first two daughters before moving to Sacramento in May 2007. With very little money or English, they took the work they could find: Berhanu at a recycling company and Miheret at a gas station.

They had heard back home that there were no homeless people in America. On his commute downtown, Berhanu saw people living on the streets and began to understand how much need there was in the city they now called home.

At first, their giving remained focused on Ethiopia. Bottle deposits collected at their church helped pay school fees for 706 children over five years. But as they got to know Sacramento, they began asking why all their help was going overseas.

“God sent us here for a reason,” Miheret says. “This is our community. It can be one of us on the street.”

They began packing fifty brown-bag lunches at a time around the kitchen table with their daughters and distributing them each month. Those visits gave them time to listen to people whose lives they had previously seen only in passing.

By 2018, they were noticing donated food and clothing ending up in the trash near Loaves & Fishes downtown. They began asking people what they needed that wasn’t already available. Almost everyone gave them the same answer: somewhere to take a shower.

Turning that need into a service they could reliably provide would take resources and experience they were still working to find. Berhanu remembers how lonely the responsibility could feel, with little money, few volunteers, and more needs than they could meet.

“We had the heart, we had the vision,” Miheret says. “But we didn’t know how an organization works here. Everything is laws, rules. How do you get funds? How do you connect people? We didn’t know anything.”

In 2018, they also met Pastor Aaron Putnam, City Director for LINC Bay Area. Aaron became a friend and began introducing them to people who could help. He brought his team into the relationship and later traveled to Sacramento to spend half a day training their board and staff. Berhanu came to call him “the divine connector.”

Through LINC, they met Kathie Barkow, who became their coach, sometimes meeting with them twice a week. She helped them work through the questions of running an organization while paying close attention to what the work was asking of them personally. Berhanu says she believed a founder needed to be standing on his own feet, “spiritually, physically, emotionally, mentally,” before he could carry anyone else.

That care reached into their family life. When one of their daughters left for college in San Diego, a package arrived from Kathie with college branded shirts for all five of them.

During COVID, Berhanu told his family he wanted to devote himself to the ministry full time. They prayed about it together, and Miheret offered to support the household.

“I will take care of the family,” she told him. “You take care of people.”

A $55,000 grant allowed them to buy a two-stall shower trailer from Indianapolis, and in 2021 they began offering showers. The trailer gave them a regular place to meet people and the opportunity to keep showing up in their lives.

One of those people was Sean Stocker. The director of another ministry called Berhanu because Sean had repeatedly had friction with staff, and they didn’t know what else to do.

“I know you can handle him,” the director said.

When Sean arrived at Mercy’s trailer, Berhanu went over to speak with him. He asked whether Sean was tired of life on the street, and Sean began to cry.

“I told him, don’t cry. I am here to listen to you and walk with you. I am not here to judge you.”

Sean talked for forty-five minutes, beginning with his childhood in St. Louis. As they spoke, Berhanu asked whether he had a talent. Sean said he could cut hair, so by the following Saturday, the ministry had bought him the equipment.

After two months of volunteering, Sean joined the staff. A partner family later bought him a car, and he has since moved into his own home. Together with his fiancée, he has given more than 4,000 free haircuts in the same lots where he used to wait for a shower. He is now saving to open his own shop.

For Berhanu, the patience and attention he offered Sean were familiar. He had received them himself.

Other guests have found a place on the team as well. The trailer’s driver was living outside when Berhanu met him and was the only one of twelve applicants to show up for an interview. Six months after being hired, he brought a friend who now cleans the trailer. Their experience of living on the streets helps them understand the people they serve.

Building that team has also changed Berhanu’s understanding of his own role. Through LINC, his board, and other mentors and community partners, he has learned to share responsibility and make room for others to grow.

“Leadership is not about doing everything by yourself,” he says. “It is about building a team, trusting others, and helping other people grow.”

Mercy now serves four sites a week and has provided more than 17,000 showers. On Thursdays at First Church of the Nazarene, the line beside the food bank can reach 150 people. Amid the work of keeping the trailer running and welcoming each guest, the staff make a point of learning names.

“Nobody is calling them by their name,” Berhanu says. “Nobody is saying good morning, good afternoon, good night. That is the big ingredient missing from their life.”

He knows how much it matters to have someone keep showing up. There have been seasons of broken equipment, uncertain bills, and exhaustion when he wondered whether the ministry could continue. Looking back, he remembers the volunteers, churches, donors, and mentors who helped them through.

At the end of his interview, he asked to speak directly to LINC’s staff and donors.

“Your effort is not in vain,” he said. “To see somebody’s life change, it takes time. It needs patience. But we are the witness.”