Housing Development Alliance

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Second Presbyterian Church of Little Rock, Arkansas

Second Presbyterian Church of Little Rock spent their week framing a new home in Leslie County and scaling a hillside (er, mountainside) in Flat Gap, Perry County.

Framing projects are always well-loved, but I must say that the volunteers really enjoyed the hillside project, too... could have been the mud, or the dozers... I suspect the real reason why they enjoyed this project so much was the CHALLENGE. The process went something like this:

Get a running start.
Try to keep your balance as you run up the hill with a roll of curlex about twice your size.
You will come to a crawl as the hillside steepens. Keep on going.
At the top of the hill, let the curlex unroll down the hill.
Scale back down the hill, nailing "staples" into the curlex as you go.
Repeat until 4p.m.

I think there are a few reasons why volunteers travel all the way to Hazard to work with us. They want to build relationships with one another and the people in this area, provide meaningful service to people in need, and "broaden their horizons" by being a part of another community for a week. But another benefit of spending a week on our worksites is learning how to work HARD. Our projects give volunteers the opportunity to push themselves to do things they never would have thought they could accomplish, learn to expect more from themselves, and value hard work. At the end of the day, this group was able to look at their workand think, "Wow. I accomplished ALL THAT."

--Kelly

Labels: AR, Second Presbyterian Church of Little Rock