Womens Build Blog #1

104 degree heat + hammers + incredible people = an amazing weekend!

Denton, Texas

June 27 & 28, 2009

How can we possibly ever stop singing the praises of our volunteers? On Saturday, June 29, 2009, Habitat for Humanity Woman Build began construction on a home for Ms. Carmencita Mathis. Although Ms Mathis was coming from a 10pm - 7am shift, at 8am, with two of her children she was excited to spend the next 8 hours pounding nails on her new home! Over 50 volunteers from all walks of life descended on the empty lot. Ready to battle the incredible heat and help get this home up is all they had in mind. As the orchestra of hammers hitting nails into wood began , I spoke to some of them. There were women from a church in Corinth as well as a group of 18 year old kids from Flower Mound. "We just graduated high school and figured we'd come and do something with our summer." (Did I mention these were teenage boys up at 8am on a Saturday?!) Amazing is the only thing that kept running through my head as I got to meet some of the people that were there. It wasn't only that they were there, but that they were battling the heat! As 11am approached, volunteers took a well-deserved rest under the make-shift shade. Even in their exhaustion, all they could do is smile and echo, "this is exciting". Not only did we have volunteers pounding nails, but we had a crew that walked around the entire morning with a basket of Hi-C fruit drinks, yogurts and granola bars. After they set up a small table of lotions, hand sanitizers and a daisy in a vase by the outhouse, they set up tables of home-made food and snacks. The entire morning, they made sure volunteers were hydrated, had a cold towel to wrap around their neck and enough to snack on. On Sunday, we had another group join to help build. Normally, we don't build on Sunday's but since it was the opening weekend, we really wanted to get as much done as possible! A BIG thank you to all of our volunteers! We will be building every Saturday from 8a - 4p except for Holidays. If you can join us, please call our office at 940-484-5006 so we can get an accurate count of who will be there.