My Skills Are Few, But My Heart Is Willing

Most of my Twin Cities team!

Sometimes life gets in the way of plans, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't continue striving to reach your goals. I got a late start on my second year of Habitat building-grad school will do that to you. But as they say, better late than never right? Well, to get the ball rolling this summer I was more than happy to build with the Twin Cities Habitat affiliate in the state closest to my heart: Minnesota!

Coming along nicely!

The Twin Cities affiliate is somewhat unique in that it builds across seven counties, depending on where there are needs and funds to build. The build site I chose today is located in Hugo, which is only fifteen minutes from my house. It's refreshing and rewarding to have an opportunity to build in a neighboring community. It feels like I've come full circle since participating in the cleanup effort from Hugo's devastating EF3 tornado in 2008.

View of the living room

The site supervisor told us that the entire lot was donated, and Anderson Windows donated all of the windows for the 33 homes that will be built on the lot. To put that in perspective, that generous donation alone will allow the Twin Cities Habitat to build an additional two homes. The affiliate is building multiple multi-unit homes throughout this space, and the ones they have finished thus far are really quite nice. For anyone unsure of the quality of Habitat homes let me say this: they may not be mansions, but every Habitat home is a quality

space and is a place homeowners can be proud to call their own.

Trying my hand at sheetrocking

Today we put up sheetrock throughout most of the upper level of the home. The previous volunteers had done a lot of work already, but there was enough for us to have a full day of work. Sheetrock is actually quite easy to put up. You simply measure the boards, measure and cut out any holes needed to go around outlets, vents, and sprinkler systems, and then screw the boards into the walls with a drill. We had a fun team today of men and women from around the Twin Cities area, and we worked really well as a team.

Around lunch time we also had the "luxury" of unloading a shipment of sheetrock and ten pallets of insulation into the row of homes that were currently being built (we were only working on one of the homes today, but they are townhome-style and are built at the same time). As you can see, we got right to work creating an assembly line and going to town sorting the materials into each of the units. It was tiring, especially in the heat, but there were plenty of laughs to go around.

Unloading insulation

I must say, I really enjoyed working on this site today. Of course I may be biased because I'm back in my home state, in my general community. However, I really did notice that everyone was especially kind and happy to work together on whatever our tasks were throughout the day. I'm telling all my non-Minnesota friends, Minnesota Nice is really a thing! I also really appreciated the help I received throughout the day from Joe, the Americorp worker who helped manage the site most of the day. Bless his heart, he had his work cut out for him monitoring me all day. I swear, he had a radar that knew when I was doing something wrong. I may not be all that skilled at what we do, and sometimes I make minor mistakes. But each time I build I am reminded more and more that it's all part of the learning process, and I get a little better at not beating myself up for not being perfect (or let's be more realistic, decent at all).

Dan & Butch, my teammates-

bless their hearts

One of the guys I got to work with, Butch, summed up my feelings perfectly today when he said, "my skills are few, but my heart is willing". Honestly, that's what Habitat for Humanity is all about. Homes are built with both experienced and amateur hands, by people both young and old. But no matter how diverse our team is, we all have equally big hearts.

Until Next Time,

Lisa