Rachel’s Monumental Event

I’ve always had an interest in foreign cultures, in travel, in language. It was in eighth grade that I went on my first mission trip with Habitat for Humanity International. I knew that what I was doing was good, I knew that in helping to build a home for a family in need I was making a difference, but I didn’t feel so changed by the event. Two years later I again joined up with Habitat for Humanity and went on a build in Honduras…still, I knew I was making a difference, but didn’t quite understand how. And so it happened that in February of 2007 I finally had a monumental event that changed my life. Our Habitat Mission Team decided that instead of choosing a new location for our trip, we would venture back to Honduras. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by this idea as I wanted to travel to a new part of the world. Early on in our trip we planned to visit the families whose houses we had helped to build two years before. I figured that this would just be a small out of the way trip to see some ordinary cinder block house and talk with a family that probably had three other teams that had also helped and who would barely remember us. There were only three of us from the original group who had returned to Honduras and so I was pushed to the front of the pack in hopes from the others that we would be recognized. I nervously moved forward not knowing what to expect. A woman peered out at us from her window and came running outside. I was amazed to see her reaction. She quickly flung open the gate and called us onto her porch. My mom pushed me ahead urging me to follow the woman, but I had a hard time simply walking. As I made my way through the gate I was flooded with emotions and memories from the build. She called her children onto the porch to greet us who gave us all hugs and a joyous welcome. This reunion was followed by a tour of the house. A house that I had helped to build. Finally I could see the finished product. I saw the sturdy walls to keep them safe, the kitchen to prepare their meals, the beds to be their nightly comfort. And I saw the pictures. I saw my picture. Strewn about the shelftop were the polaroids that we had taken during the build and given to the family. The time that I spent inside of that concrete house in a small village in Honduras truly changed me forever. It’s not that I’m so radically different from the person that I was before. I volunteered, had an interest in the world, a desire to help others, but I never realized how amazingly rewarding my work could be. I never knew the impact that I could make on someone’s life with my small tasks. When we left that day, it wasn’t for the physical building of the home that we were thanked, it was for our time, for our caring. That is the moment that has made me want to continue to travel to such places and reach out to as many people as possible.