Building a Forever Home

Blog post written by Jared M. and Jeremy B.

“Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” - Luke 6:47-49

For six years Alberto has been working for Sus Hijos building homes for the less fortunate.  Before the gift of his own new house, Alberto and his family, consisting of his wife and 8-year old daughter, had lived in an unstable wooden house.  Other missiosn teams came, attempting to build the concrete house for Alberto and his family to replace the small and rundown wooden house they lived in at the time.  Unfortunately, both attempts failed and the teams were not able to complete the projects. We can only imagine the devastation that they must have felt through this, losing hope time and again, so being able to finally build the house was a huge honor and all the more meaningful to us. 

Throughout the two days our team worked on Alberto’s new home, we successfully completed a full painting job, pouring concrete flooring, furnishing the home, and several exterior preparations to beautify the overall appearance. While it was hard work and a challenge to complete on schedule, the idea of building a house for a selfless family like Alberto’s was a gift to us as we were able to repay him for the years of his hard work, sacrifice and service to the community and to the Lord, while not expecting anything in return. It was such a blessing to be able to give their family this incredible gift, which blessed us all in return when they were given the keys to their brand new, fully furnished home and went inside for the first time. No family could have been more deserving of this home than Alberto’s, because after years of faithfully building houses for others, God rewarded him with a dream come true, a place to finally call their own. 

For us the most meaningful part of the whole experience was seeing their reactions to the finished house that our team worked so hard to build and prepare. The process was pretty physically straining but worth all the time and energy put into the build up of Alberto’s house, from pouring the concrete flooring, to ensuring there was no paint on any of the window panels. We also found an incredible sense of teamwork with the people working on the house as both days went on. Everyone seemed so eager to get their job done. No one complained abut what they were doing, and everyone found different ways to make the process more fun. The happiness and love that was brought to Alberto and his family through the completion of his house was so powerful in indescribable ways and we are so thankful to have been the ones to complete his new concrete home as well as to spread God’s love and joy through our hard work.