What about El Salvador?

I saw an informational meeting listed in the newsletter for Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity. They were planning a trip to El Salvador to build houses there. It sounded interesting to me so I decided to attend, even though I had not yet completed the treatment for my stomach cancer. They had some interesting food at the meeting, something called a pupusa. Kind of a stuffed hand made corn tortilla. They were served with 2 different kinds of sauce and an EL Salvadorian cold slaw. They were very good even though I was unable to eat much. They told us the story of El Salvador and the poverty there. We saw a video from Habitat Global Village. After the meeting I decided if I was healthy enough and able to raise the money I would go. The trip would cost just under $2000. I ordered my passport (bald head and all, chemo you know) and set forth to raise enough money to go.

I sent letters to everyone I could think of friends, family and my various doctors. My family surprised me with a card and $500 to get my fund raising started. I think in the end I raised about 2/3 of the trip. As it was getting close I received a donation from our Team Leaders church with that I was able to put the necessary funds together.

As the trip approached we received a call from the airlines that they had changed the schedule for the flight to El Salvador. The new schedule did not work so now our Team Leader had to scramble and find another airline that could get us to EL Salvador when we needed to get there. No easy task since we were a group of 14, 11 from Des Moines, 1 from Chicago, 1 from LA, and 1 from Cincinnati. He did a great job found flights athat worked for all and even saced us a little money.

I will write about the actual trip in my next blog. Check out my fund raiser on Twitter. I want to go back in 2013.

Making a House a Home

I recently attended my first house dedications. In all the houses I have worked on I had never come back for the house dedication. I attended 4 house dedications in the past month. Three were new houses and one was a rehab. The older home was first. This house took more then the normal amount of time to rehab due to the amount of lead paint found in the house. But when it was done the Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity house leaders, Americorp, and volunteers had done an amazing job. Hundreds of hours were spent on the original woodwork, the end result was a beautiful house and a very proud and happy HOME owner.

The other 2 houses were next to each other. the third house was down the block. It was so fun to see all the families standing together to receive the keys to their new HOMES. Now the houses were indeed homes. Complete with new bicycles for the children and a new John Deer Mower for the yard.

And as a bonus the food was plentiful and delicious.

Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity

Several houses later it was time for the 2010 Blitz build. 20 houses in 10 days. Week one was rainy and muddy. I am glad that I had decided to volunteer for all of week 2. I was assigned to house #1 with Kim. After working a day on that house. Kim asked me to work on House #2 as that house leader needed some assistance. We had great volunteers all week. One of the groups had brothers. One worked for the company that was providing the volunteers and the other one was home on leave from the service. How cool was that he took one of his precious days on leave and spent it building with his brother. The days were long and hard but worth it. Check-in was at the neighborhood park 2 blocks away. They also served lunch there. So either you parked by the house or in the park's lot. I choose to park by the house I was assigned to work it. Even though Habitat provided tools to work with. I still brought several of my own. It seems easier to have some of your own tools rather then hunt for the tool in the tool trailer. The end of the last day found our house painted, landscaped, and carpeted. The houses were all beautiful.

Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity

Kim is one of the house construction leaders that works for Habitat. Like I said before he took me under his wing and helped me learn allot about Habitats way of building a house. He also encouraged me to attend the Volunteer Crew Leader classes. So I did. After attending the classes I was looking forward to my first time working on a new house build.

Habitat was going to build a house on the steps of the capital. So I signed up for both shifts on day 2 the final day of the build. I was assigned the task of getting the siding onto the back of the house. I must have been living right. As I sat in an all day meeting on the first day of the build I watched out the window at the rain that came down quite hard at times. When I arrived at the build site for my day of building I was hoping for better weather then the day before. It was cool and damp but after the sun was up a while it dried out and was warm that day. Most of my volunteers that day were ladies from Wells Fargo and a couple from the Governors office. They did a great job and at the end of the day we had the back side on the house insulated with foam board and sided. I felt really good about how everything went that day.

I will be back again.

Another day another house

It was still winter when I volunteered on another house. This was house number 3 I had worked on that winter. I was excited because this house had the furnace installed and running so the house would be warm. We were going to be working on the walls and floor. After the usual safety talk and prayer we were assigned tasks or actually the tasks were detailed out and various volunteers took on each one. Well, I volunteered to work on the garage doors.

Of course, back out in the cold. We got the overhead door back on its track and rehung the walk through door that someone had kicked off the hinges. With that done we turned our attention to the front wall in the garage where someone had tried to drive a car through it and knocked if off the foundation. It took us a while and some additional muscle but we did manage to get the wall repaired and straightened up.

One of the house leaders had kind of taken me under his wing on these first houses, I have some construction skills but I am not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagine. He talked to me about become a Volunteer Crew Leader. I was kind of hesitant at first but he sais they have classes to show you how things are done in a Habitat build. So I decided to sign up for the classes and continuew to volunteer and see where it goes.

Next the Captol Build.

Getting Started

I had always wanted to volunteer some of my time but I just did not know just where to do it. I had heard about Habitat for Humanity but just did not get around to contacting them. Then Disney came out with their "Give a Day, Get a Day" program. If you volunteered at a non-profit on their list you earned a free day in the park. Being a giant Disney fan this was the incentive that pushed me over the edge to volunteer. I contacted the Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity and set-up a day to volunteer. I arrived at the house. It turned out to be an old house that Habitat for Humanity was do a rehab on. It was middle of winter below zero outside and not much warmed in the house since there was no furnace yet. The house manager greeted me and made me feel welcome.

The day started with an explanation of Habitat's mission and a short prayer. Volunteers were then assigned tasks and everyone went to work. It was cold, dirty work. But I had a great time and scheduled additional volunteer days.