Saturday, I spent about 10 hours working with members of my church and Habitat for Humanity to build a house for a Katrina family.

In that time frame, we went from a bare foundation to a house with exterior and interior walls, windows and ceiling trusses...

It was an awesome experience!

I always had wanted to participate in it, and felt that I had an understanding of what I'd derive from it. I wasn't even close.

The absolute care and commitment to code that goes into those homes is unbelievable. The amount of heavy lifting is unbelievable, too.

But, to see the joy on the face of the person who was there to represent the family, when we ended our shift...

It was awesome. The whole thing. And, then, when I think about how Jesus was a carpenter by trade and how His ministry -- in its purest form -- is about building people's lives and providing them shelter, structure and function...

I'm positively floating from this experience. I encourage you all -- if you ever have the opportunity to help or support H4H -- to do so!

It's awesome!
[Edited 10/2/06 8:43am]

HH is a great organization!

Good for you ThreadBare... Make sure you keep telling as many people as possible, that way people are more likely to do the work!
You are a star

FuzzyD said:

Thanks, it was an awesome thing. I'm no star.

I did leave with a boo-boo, though.

A group of us were about to lift an exterior wall, and a buddy and I were starting to lift our end.

Yup, you guessed it: He dropped the wall on one of my fingers.

I was wearing gloves and God blessed me to be able to snatch most of my finger back in time... It escaped with some burst vessels at the tip.

I have mad respect for Django Reinhardt and Phil Keaggy, but I did not want to join their category of guitarists missing fingers...

Commie!

2the9s said:

Git!

Thanks for sharing this experience. I could feel your sense of pure euphoria and connectedness from reading it!

my kids and I helped twice with Habitat it is a great experience and not to mention a good workout!

super cool i love habitat for humanity

My aunt and uncle work for them, and walked across the country to raise money for them ( and wrote a book about it).

They're a great group.

HereToRockYourWorld said:

Thank you. I'm going to get this book. Seems a timely pick for me. Thanks so much, again.

ThreadBare said:

I bet you'll like it. Glad you had such a good experience.

I work for a non-profit organization that trains women to do construction (amongst MANY other awesome things) and our partner is H4H.

This year as part of the training, our whole staff (23 women) volunteered for a week and helped the women we are training build the house they were working on, which is a triplex being built for 3 families. We got to meet the families, who were also helping build the house.

It was so awesome. I loved every minute of it.

H4H