Photos by Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Lydia Wade has her tears wiped away by Kathy Denny after seeking her counsel at the B.L.D.G. Phase 2 Inc. mission center in Pulaski. Wade has recently fallen on hard times but has known Denny since they were in high school and says she feels she can always count on Denny for help. "That's my girl," Wade says.

Cindy Haga and Tommy Thompson joke in the lobby of the Building. Both are volunteers at the Pulaski mission center.

PULASKI -- In the vision, Kathy Denny stood in a wheat field, arms outstretched.

The image appeared to 77-year-old Bea Ogle eight years ago as she knelt to pray at the altar in the Pulaski Church of God. She turned to Denny, the younger woman praying beside her.

"I said, 'Kathy, I see in the future that you're going to be gleaning in the fields. The corners will be left to you for the needy people,' " Ogle recalled.

Ogle said she interpreted the vision based on the biblical story of Ruth, a poor woman who asked Boaz, a wealthy man in her city, if she could glean the corners of his fields in order to give that food to her family.

At the time, Denny, a convicted felon recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, couldn't comprehend what the older woman's vision meant. But in time, it would all make sense to her.

Today, Denny is helping people in need as the founder and director of a mission center in downtown Pulaski.

The B.L.D.G. Phase 2 Inc. center, which stands for Building Lives Developing Godly Examples, offers shelter, food and clothing in exchange for work at the center. The center at 34 W. Main St., known as "the Building," includes a soup kitchen, thrift store and furnished upstairs rooms that Denny one day plans to offer to homeless people.

Denny, a Pulaski native, said she purchased the three-story building from Appalachian Power Co. for the center in 2006 because she has a special love for Pulaski and for the people in need who live here.

Heeding the call

Born into a family with a history of alcoholism, Denny said she became a drug and alcohol abuser herself. At age 16, she gave birth to a son who died soon afterward from sudden infant death syndrome, she said. The trauma of his death led her even deeper into a forest of bottles and pills and eventually a felony charge for stealing a woman's purse.

But 12 years ago, Denny said, she turned to God for help.

"The first thing that I think happened to me after I got saved was that a lady at our church, Bea Ogle, came to me, and she was at the altar at our church, Pulaski Church of God, and she said that the Lord had given her a vision of me, and she said, 'I seen you in the middle of a harvest field with your hands raised,' " Denny said.

"I just looked at her and I thought, 'No, whatever, no,' " she said.

But "as I grew up in the Lord and started just walking after God, the first thing that the Lord had me do was ... he had me start reaching out into my community, on my block where I live."

She and her husband, Buck, began that reaching out by collecting "stuff" -- clothes, bookbags and toys -- that they doled out to needy children in their neighborhood. They opened up their home as a "safe haven" where children could come to talk.

Later, Denny began taking mission trips, such as helping flood victims in West Virginia and working at the City of Refuge mission center in the projects of Atlanta.

A City of Refuge mission center volunteer persuaded her that she should open a mission center in Pulaski.

The idea seemed as crazy as Ogle's vision. But Denny said she has learned to trust God. She found the building on West Main Street, and she and her cousin Scott Hall prayed about how much to bid. They offered $150,000.

Piece by piece

At first, it was hard to find the $3,100 needed each month to make a payment on the place and keep the lights on. Denny relied on her savings, plus donations and tithing commitments from the community.

Denny gave up her profitable house-cleaning business to devote time to transforming the cavernous building into the mission center. She recruited volunteers, such as Barbara Kidd, who retired from a full-time job at Volvo to help full time at the Building.

The first donations of clothing, furniture and money allowed them to turn the foyer into a living room filled with plump couches, rocking chairs, a coffee maker and speakers blasting tunes from Spirit FM, a Christian radio station based in Lynchburg.

On Dec. 12, they opened the building to the public with an event called "Winter Wonderland," in which kids were able to get their pictures made with Santa. From that point on, people could hang out and talk in the living room. Denny and volunteers began collecting and storing items for a thrift store.

In February, volunteers from the Pulaski Church of God began operating a soup kitchen in an adjacent room, serving crowds as large as 50 on Sunday afternoons.

In March, students from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia spent their spring break helping Denny sort donations and convert a room on the first floor into the thrift store, which opened in June.

Kidd took on the task of organizing the community work program. People who need help paying their rent or electricity bill can work in the center for credit. Denny pays the bill, and the person agrees to pay her back -- $10 an hour -- with labor.

Sales from the thrift store in June allowed the staff to spend almost $700 helping people in the community pay bills, Denny said.

People ordered to perform community service by the Pulaski County courts can also choose to work at the center.

"When they come in, their probation officer brings me a paper and I work with them on how many hours they have," Kidd said. "Some of them come and some of them don't," which she reports back to the officer, she added.

Denny and Kidd stress to their workers that the center's slogan is "We're a hand up, not a handout."

Big dreams

Denny has an iron will that shows in her blue eyes when she means business.

But sometimes it is hard for her to wrestle day to day with the despair and hopelessness that come into the center.

Some days, she admits that she wishes she could go back to cleaning houses, entertaining the idea that she and her husband would be able to provide more for their grandchildren, maybe even go on a vacation.

But then something happens, she says. A recovering alcoholic calls to tell Denny that while drinking a beer on a friend's front porch on top of Mount Olive, she suddenly had an urge to be in the Building, around people who love her -- and so she ran there as fast as her legs would carry her.

A once-homeless woman who worked at the Building peers out at Denny from behind a curtain in her new downtown apartment.

The stories don't always have happy endings. Two women abandoned their work commitments in July. One of them owes Denny 70 hours of work.

Still, Denny has dreams about as big as the massive blue truck she often drives around.

She wants to open a cafe and arcade for children. She wants to start a drug counseling program for adults and teenagers.

Lydia Wade, a friend of Denny's from high school, often stops by the thrift store to say hello.

Wade and Denny went their separate ways after high school but recently reunited when Denny and the Building staff used thrift store donations to furnish Wade's apartment.

Although Wade said she had a drug problem, she said she's back on her feet, with a new job, new place and a newfound friend in Denny.

"Kathy's a good lady. I been going to church with her," Wade said. "She loves the Lord, I do know that."