Community of Love
By Millard Fuller

Fuller receives a warm reception during a recent visit to India.

Recently, I was in Costa Rica for Habitat for Humanity International's board meeting. On Sunday morning, after the last session of the board had ended the night before, I hosted a breakfast for some local Habitat people from a nearby affiliate in San Ramon.

I had visited San Ramon earlier in the week, prior to the first session of the board meeting. I visited several of the 84 Habitat houses that had been completed there and saw many of the 34 more houses that were under construction.

The houses are simple, but sturdily built. The families radiated joy as they led me through their houses and told how happy they were to be living in a good and solid house. One homeowner cried openly as she told me what the house meant to her and her family.

But the happiest and most emotional homeowner attended the Sunday breakfast. She introduced herself as "homeowner number 56." She showed a picture of the old house where she and her children had lived for eight years. She told of the leaking roof and the rain-soaked mattresses, and she talked about the sense of despair and loss of dignity. She told how she would cry tears of bitterness night after night because of her family's sad plight.

Then, she said, her family was chosen to have house number 56. It was a transforming experience. She talked about a restoration of hope and a return of dignity in their lives. She said that the children began to do better in school, and that she still cries often but now her tears are those of great joy and happiness.

Most importantly, she said she and her family felt like they were a part of a loving family -- a member of a community that cared for her and the others in the Habitat family.

This homeowner's experience is a microcosm of what happens daily in Habitat communities around the world. This venture of faith and love in action transforms despair into hope, darkness into light, despondency into joy.

As more people join in this growing movement, more families can be rescued from despair and hopelessness and moved into the glorious light of caring, love and community.


Millard Fuller is the founder and president of Habitat for Humanity International.


Reprinted from Habitat World Magazine, June/July 2000.
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©2000 Habitat for Humanity International