Ground Blessing

Today was a joyous day for Habitat for Humanity Lansing. This evening we had the first ground blessing of the spring.

The hole for the crawl space was dug earlier this week.

The home will be for, Teresa, a single mother of four who works three jobs to be able to afford her own home and support her family. After several prayers by the local Lutheran pastors and thanks to the churches and businesses that are funding and building the home, the new home owner introduced us to her family. She has the support of her father, brother, sister, uncle, cousins and of course her children. She tearfully stated that it has been difficult for her to get this far to be able to afford her own home. She said she would do it again even if she had to work a fourth job because she was so happy to have gotten to this step. Teresa will have to put in 300 hours of sweat equity building her own home as well as other Habitat homes. Her family will assist her as well as the many volunteers who will spend endless hours in partnership with Teresa to reach this goal.

I brought my friend Becky to the ground blessing and she was quite interested in all the happenings. Becky is a professional writer and has volunteered to write the stories about Habitat volunteers and homeowners so that our community can get to know more about the good work of Habitat and why it is so important to our community especially now in these difficult economic times.

Charlie, Habitat construction manager, was doing some last minute work before the building begins tomorrow. We are hoping the rain will hold off.
The lot adjacent to Teresa's home will also contain another Habitat home in the near future.
The ground blessing was attended by many Habitat volunteers, staff, ministers and church members, donors, friends and family of Teresa and a few board members.
This home is being funded and built by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and members of 13 Lutheran churches in the Lansing area. Thrivent Financial has pledged $100 million to build 2000 Habitat homes over a four year period in the United States. This is the third year of the campaign and this is the third Thrivent Builds home built in the Lansing area, although Thrivent has locally assisted Habitat Lansing in building three additional homes.

At the end of the ceremony all those in attendance are asked to write a special wish or blessing for the family. These blessings are placed in the attic walls of the home so they will always be with the family. My wish was for Teresa and her family to have ten times more joys than sorrows.
Teresa being greeted by those at the ground blessing.

Following the ceremony I had the privilege of meeting Pastor Moe from the church where my friend Carol Se had her New Horizons Band concert. (See my May 21 blog post). He plays the tuba in the band. What a small world.

Becky and I went to Panera for dinner. Becky is a community minded person who puts in volunteer time for many organizations including the local dog park and hospice. We both just ended terms on our high school alumni association. While on the alumni association we had the joy of helping recommend funding of grants for school programs and selecting worthy recipients of scholarships and other awards.

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.