The Slavkovsky Family
A Habitat house frees one Oregon family to help change the world

After a decade of mission work along the southern border of the United States in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, Rick Slavkovsky moved his family to Sisters, Ore., to be near his widowed mother. The family of five lived in a two-bedroom house that lacked adequate heat and that sometimes had mold growing on the walls during the winter time. In 1991, the Slavkovskys became the first homeowners to build with the newly organized Sisters Habitat for Humanity.

Their daughter Mary, now 23 and a graduate of Seattle University, remembers telling her fourth-grade class that she was getting a new house for Christmas. Her younger sister, Rose, who entered Seattle University as a freshman this fall, was 4 years old at the time. "I do remember first moving in," she says, "and I was just so stoked because it was huge to me."

Rick and his wife, Theresa, saw their new residence as more than just a house. "It was this whole relationship that developed with the volunteers of Habitat that really touched our lives, the entire family's lives," Theresa says. "The house was kind of secondary to the relationships that developed and that are still very strong today."

"That's something that this home was able to do: to bring the world to us kids." --Rose Slavkovsky

From their new home, the Slavkovsky clan became involved with the Oregon-based international relief and counseling organization Good Samaritan Ministries. "We had people from Israel, India, Kenya, Uganda, staying in our home," says Rose, who plans to major in international studies like her sister. "So that's something that this home was able to do: to bring the world to us kids."

Older brother Judah, 25 and in his second year at Harvard Medical School, has a similarly global perspective; he spent time this past summer volunteering in a clinic in rural Ethiopia and hopes someday to use his medical training to effect change in underdeveloped countries. All three Slavkovsky children have spent time volunteering abroad with Habitat and other organizations. "I guess you know what you are around. If you sort of grow up with these questions of 'What creates a border?' and 'Why is it so different on either side?'" he says, "then you don't have to take that very far to really be engaged."

Working with Habitat to own their home furthered that engagement, the family says. "Habitat provided the base, the home, the structure," Theresa says.

"Habitat walking that road with us, it just makes it all that much easier to go forward," Judah observes. "It's so enabling to have a place of your own to grow up in. When you have that stability, you can really think about things beyond the next day. I think Habitat freed us, in a way."

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