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St. Matthew’s Volunteers at Austin’s Habitat for Humanity

Saturday, April 28^th was one of those win, win, win days for all.  The sun was bright, the sky was clear, the temperature started off moderately.

Twenty members from St. Matthew’s congregated at 6204 Montana Street at 8 AM that morning to work on Carmen’s house.  Carmen Huerta had qualified to purchase a house from Austin’s Habitat for Humanity. 

To meet that criterion, Carmen first had to demonstrate need.  She had to be living in substandard housing.  Secondly, she had to commit 400 hundred hours of her own time to Habitat.  Before she could even pick out her lot, she had to volunteer 200 hours working on others’ homes.  Finally, she had to prove ability to pay.  Unlike what many think, these homes are not free.  Carmen will pay $500 per month on mortgage, taxes, and insurance for the next thirty years on an interest free loan.

Carmen can do that.  She works at a plastic factory in the St. Elmo area of east Austin.  Though small in stature, she obviously is fiercely determined to provide a safe, attractive environment for her two elementary age boys, her mother, her sister-in-law and young nephew.

Our crew from St. Matt’s was there that day to put the final touches on Carmen’s home.

We were charged with completing the outside fence that enclosed the backyard, weed whacking the backyard, trimming-out and painting the front porch, touch-up painting the interior, and clean-up for windows, base boards, etc. following major construction.  Carmen worked along beside us the entire day.  She was our “boss” and our ultimate point of focus.  .

 For the volunteers from St Matthew’s this was an excellent opportunity to put names with faces that we see on a regular basis at church.  So often at church, we smile, nod, go on our way but miss the opportunity to speak in length.  Today we talked.  We not only learned names, we learned about the fabric of each others lives.  We shared concerns about illnesses,  news of upcoming trips, pride in our children, stories about how we got to St. Matthew’s all while digging, leveling, hammering, painting, trimming, and cleaning Carmen’s house. 

As we looked around the neighborhood, we could see that Carmen’s house was not the only one being worked on that Saturday.  There must have been half a dozen similar houses with similar volunteers and similar owners- to- be all busily working to provide a haven for a family.  In fact the Catholic Diocese turned the house they were working on over to the owner that afternoon.  We were told as tradition goes, the new owner received the keys to the home and then promptly turned to a newly designated owner -to- be and passed the hammer to continue the building.

We left Carmen’s house that afternoon with a fence almost finished (the supply of pickets ran out before we did); we left her backyard mowed, her front porch painted and trimmed, her interior walls and base boards touched-up with fresh paint, and the windows cleaned of all that extraneous paint!

We from St. Matt’s left one another with a better understanding of who we are.  We shared that delicious fatigue that is rewarded to those who manually labor  and is wonderfully soothed by a hot shower – and sometimes bed.  We shared a peace that today we had been working for Carmen and for God.