FREEZE  FRAME 

Feeling Groovy!  Phoenix is beautiful in February!  Today a classmate and I are having lunch at the picnic tables in South Ranch Habitat for Humanity.  We are hungry because we have been having fun digging holes for plants.  Other have been digging irrigation trenches, and others roofing.

Now we eat our French bread, pickles, cheese and summer sausage with zest.  We wash down the potato chips, cookies and dust with lemonade. Tastes good.  We are tired but feel good to labor.  A deeper appreciation for the construction workers and their hard physical labor comes to our minds.  Volunteers are using their muscles and strength to support themselves and build homes in growing Phoenix.  Here in this community the houses are attractive and pretty.  We are impressed with the model community and the volunteer labor to make it exist.  These regular volunteers from construction crews don’t get a big paycheck for their hard work or any at all for most of them but yet they give their time and energy often. 

This reminds me of the pioneers helping to raise their neighbor’s log cabin or barn, or a community corn shucking or quilting bee.  Or harvesters helping on others farms. We think of pioneers and the similarities of that comparison here in Habitat for Humanity and essential differences.

The idea of coming back to volunteer in the Day Care Center interests us but the alarming deadlines for our heavy class load reminds us of copious reading assignments in all our classes, writing papers due, preparing for tests, and we must think that if we were ever to come back to volunteer it must be on Spring break or Summer maybe.

We respect the hard work and efforts of the twelve co-coordinators.   They do not receive a regular paycheck from a corporate office for their time and work but donations from some business who contribute to Habitat for Humanity.  They must wonder sometimes when they go into the grocery store how this is going to work but so far they have enthusiastic seminars for visiting students and groups who come to see the attractive model community and the happy residents who live there.  New low income first time home owners who qualify, get a reduced price on their home and interestingly Bank One does not charge any interest rates on the mortgages.  Banks are community minded and the picture we see in the park is green and pretty.