In 1998 Africa beckoned.  Peter Sexton had enrolled me and my son Roc in a trip to Botswana to build houses with 12 others in the small village of Kasane, and our experience building alongside the local women and men in that village inspired the direction my life would take.  Each day began and ended with a prayerful reflection about our building project.  Activities like mixing concrete with shovels (think making pasta, only on the ground), packing forms for brick making, and laying house foundations filled our days.  Each night we regrouped for a meal of local game and vegetables around a blazing fire pit and under a starry sky, talking with our teammates, the homeowners, or the local villagers.

Back in the US, I became a Habitat Team Leader and eventually took a job as Director of South Shore Habitat for Humanity.  With some enthusiastic King's Chapel friends we planned a work trip to Honduras so that we could also visit our Sunday School sponsored child at the Episcopal orphanage El Hogar, Lenin Canelas (He was about to graduate from high school!).  Our team built in a housing project that would provide simple decent concrete block homes for people displaced by Hurricane Mitch and who had been living in shelters nearby for well over a year.  The work was laborious, the weather was hot, but the local future homeowners who joined us each day with their joyful smiles, inexhaustible enthusiasm for the project, and expressions of gratitude kept us motivated.  We built alongside a single mother, who, having finished her unit was helping her son and pregnant daughter to build their home.  She graciously invited us to visit her current living quarters as a gesture of thanks.  We sat on boxes in her 10'x10' shack, one of about 80 temporary shelters, to house these homeless families.  While we enjoyed a hot drink together (relying heavily on our Spanish-speaking team members, i.e., Charles Dietrick and Miguel Gomez-Ibanez to translate our conversation) her small herd of guinea pigs squeaked around the room; they would become the protein for her meals in the week ahead.  She overwhelmed us with her hospitality offering us tea and cookies and many smiles.  Our KC connection kicked in each day as we 14 boarded our battered but working van to travel the 45 minute distance to our construction site traversing the Avenida de la Muerte - the Avenue of Death, named for the many cars that had fallen off the steep cliff alongside the road.  Miguel at the wheel, finding our lane in between the dense mix of cars, vans, goats, cows, and chickens we found ourselves saying aloud the General Thanksgiving!  Lenin joined us to build one day and we had dinner with him, as well as a worshipping at his home church. 

My husband, Dick and I joined the first trip organized by Peter and Anne Sexton that combined our partner church in Kolosvar and a Habitat build in a district of Cluj-Napoca, Romania in Transylvania.  Part of the project was work on an apartment unit that would be the future home of a school teacher.  As a single mother she had purchased and renovated a home under the Communist rule only to have it legally repossessed by the original owners of the property when the Communists were overturned.  Turned out, she had been living in a homeless shelter for women separated from her young sons who were forced to live in a children's home.  She visited the work site each day after work to help us. She expressed clearly that this home would change the course of her family's life.  Our First Church Kolosvar Unitarian friends, the Pastor Ferenc Balint and his daughter Reka, joined us for a Habitat build day, and our Partner Church friends hosted us to bounteous meals and we were honored to meet with a group of young people and witness their formal Service Confirmation.

For six years I led the Habitat affiliate in the South Shore and worked with people in 32 communities to build over 28 homes during that time.  And Dick and I went to Slidell, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina, to make a small contribution to the rebuilding many homes in greater New Orleans area.

In summary Habitat for Humanity provides the opportunity to work alongside people whom you might never meet, whether in a neighborhood in greater Boston area or in a foreign country.  In that direct work and visible service, attested to by sore muscles and a full heart, I've always felt the joy of service touched by the Creator's hand.

Please find out more about our KC trips during Building on Faith weekend and talk to those who participated.  Go to
https://kingschapelhfhromania.shutterfly.com/to see photos of our trip to Kolosvar/Cluj and join a Habitat project whenever you're able!