Built Together In Him: ABWK Has Holiday Style

Can you believe it is only a week until Christmas?! Soon Karl and I will be heading to Phoenix to catch a flight to Ogden, UT to visit our family for the holidays. Last year was an experience of a lifetime, and we received bounteous hospitality and love from our friends in Belfast, but we are excited to be spending the holidays in the company of our family.

This past weekend we held another “A Brush with Kindness” event in the Sunnyside Neighborhood, and in the spirit of the holidays and as an effort to increase neighborhood involvement, we planned a fun, holiday neighborhood gathering around the regular clean-up and construction activities. The day started at 7:00 am as we joined Habitat and neighborhood at the Gonzales’s house to repair the front porch roof, replace rotted fascia and trim boards, fill masonry cracking, caulk windows and paint the entire exterior of the home.

While the hard work was happening on the house, Santa and his elves were busy setting up a festive float for photos, holiday crafts and a tasty BBQ for everyone after the morning of work. At 10:00 Santa took his seat in his throne and welcomed anyone who wanted their photo with him. All of the volunteers and the homeowners had their photo taken with Santa, and we had three families come by from the neighborhood. The energy was great and everyone who came had a wonderful time, but we were a bit disappointed by the turn out from neighborhood residents. The weather was really cold, especially for Arizona and this is a busy time of year, but we thought there might have been a better turn out from the 250 families we sent invitations to. After Santa finished his photo-ops and the work was completed on the home, we all gathered to have a nice BBQ to finish the day off.

Reflecting on the days’ activities, there were definitely some successes of the day: the Jenkins Family who we helped in September came out to pay it forward by helping on the house all morning, three members of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association volunteered as well, all of the volunteers had a very fun time with the extra holiday activities, we reached out to a handful of neighborhood residents, and the Gonzales Family was more than appreciative! However, we are still quite downtrodden by the poor response from the neighborhood. We will continue to try and get our name out there by scheduling regular ABWK events and networking with organizations and members of the community.