Dear Family and Friends,

We want to include you in our spring break mission to Durham this week.  Our goal for the week is to learn what God is doing in the area of poverty and homelessness in our own back yard, so that we might get in step with him.  We have had a fantastic start.

SATURDAY, 3.7

Habitat

On Saturday we began our service with Habitat for Humanity in Durham.  We were blessed early in the morning by seeing the dedication and groundbreaking of a new habitat house in New Hope Crossing. New Hope Crossing is a large piece of property that Habitat bought in order to build a whole community. They have dozens of homes in the community so far, and we will be working there later in the week.  In the afternoon, we teamed up with the Ksor family on their habitat home on Jackson St.  They didn’t speak much English, but their 7 year old daughter took a liking to Katherine (one of our Duke team members)  We spent the day cleaning up the property and doing some odds and ends inside the house.  This neighborhood was the first of Habitat’s Home Blitz’s (think extreme makeover on steroids).  In 2005, they built 7 homes in 7 days in this community and they have built several more since.  Many of the homes were taken over by crime and drugs.  Since Habitat has come into the neighborhood to help homebuyers buy affordable housing, crime has gone down 50% in that neighborhood.