Habitat team builds new friendships
Ralph Schmidt, of the Church of the Resurrection in Spokane Valley, works with Melanie Smith, a recent Gonzaga graduate, moving gravel up a steep hillside to the worksite.
Music blared from speakers inside the small concrete block house in Coatatelco, Mexico, as we celebrated the end of our Habitat for Humanity building project in May. Our group of three adults and 10 Gonzaga University students had joined with a young family and other villagers to add three rooms to an existing house where Paulino and Rosa live with Paulino’s family. Paulino, Rosa and their three children were all living in one room.
For us, the time in southern Mexico was an incredible opportunity. An opportunity to make new friends, to share in meaningful work, and to develop some new cultural understanding. Habitat’s goal is to eliminate substandard housing worldwide – a tall order. It reminds me a bit of the daunting Millennium Development Goals to which the Episcopal Church is committed. These, too, challenge us to join in the worldwide effort to eradicate poverty and hunger, improve health and education and work toward global cooperation and development – unbelievably challenging goals.
When you look at goals like these on paper, they almost seem impossible. But when you have an opportunity to do some of this work “on the ground” or to participate in some other concrete way, you see the value of even the smallest effort. Nothing is insignificant. Even a small donation or some volunteer labor is a chance to chip away at the poverty that affects so much of the world.
Our work in Coatetelco was physically challenging. We hauled cement blocks and buckets of sand, gravel and fill dirt up a steep, rocky slope. We mixed mortar and concrete on the ground, using shovels instead of a cement mixer. We helped lay the blocks that formed the house. The days were long and hot.
But we had a great time. We shared a mid-day meal (cooked over a wood fire) with our new Mexican friends and negotiated language barriers as we got to know one another. And as we finished the project we sang and danced and exchanged small gifts. But for me, the greatest gift was easy to name: a village of new friends.
