Renewed Treasures in St. Charles sells all kinds of donated items, ranging from clothes, knickknacks and trinkets. Founder Cynthia Besselman owns the store and volunteers every Saturday apart from her job as a nurse. One of the main purposes for the store is to donate money to Christian missionaries.

“I do have a goal,” Cynthia said. “We started off small, and we only had around two missionaries. Now we’ve got a lot more people. My goal is pretty simple. I’ve got to keep it simple. In life, as a nurse, as a Sunday School teacher, as a mom, as a cashier at our store, owner of our store and as a human being, my goal is this: to share the love of Jesus to whomever I meet.”

“Share the Gospel of Jesus” is their mission statement. The programs that they work with help people across 65 different countries. After all the taxes and bills are paid for the store, the rest of the proceeds go to these Christian missionaries. Missionaries are programs where volunteers help people suffering across the world, whether it’s from food, water or lack of quality education. Some volunteer programs consist of helping orphanages, teachers and students, hospitals and just cities and villages in general.

“I love [Renewed Treasures],” Mike Murphy, volunteer and former Rams player, said. “I know the work it’s doing, and it makes me feel better. Volunteers are super nice, and doing work like this makes me feel full.”

People from the age of three all the way up to senior citizens can volunteer here. No matter what’s going on in their lives or what been going on, they have a sort of safe haven when they go to volunteer there.

“We want families to learn serving, helping and volunteering,” Cynthia said. “There are people who have had it bad with heroin, or have had a DUI, and they just want to work off some community service hours. We all work together and it’s amazing, and it’s for a good cause.”

The idea of the store goes back to when Cynthia’s son was younger and he helped out with missionaries. Over the years, she learned that raising the funds to help people and to travel the world to help these people costs a lot of money. This is why she set up the store.

“I like how Renewed Treasures has a number of ways to change the world,” Cynthia’s husband Tom Besselman said. “I also like how people get to come up and tell their stories all while helping our missionaries in the process.”