Mucho Thank You!

This last weekend we painted three houses of low-income families with the help of many hands or manos from the larger community. It is always amazing to see how quickly we can paint the exterior of a house when we have 25-30 volunteers working on a house together. I’m thankful for having so many friends that are willing to come out for three hours on a Saturday morning and make a difference in the life of a neighbor. I think that too often people truly believe that they don’t have anything to give to anyone. I’m thrilled to disprove this to anyone who is willing to come out and get paint on themselves and a house.

I want to highlight Maria Cathelina for a moment. She’s a Hispanic grandma who has a very alive faith. Her house was in great need of being painted but didn’t have the resources to make this happen. She has a friend in the neighborhood that called me and asked about whether I would be able to help her friend Maria. She described Maria’s house as the one with the big trees that clearly needed to be painted because the yellow paint had faded or peeled off so the block was exposed.

Maria was blessed to have some of my close friends bring their ‘business family’ to paint her house. They were very much ‘go-getter’ types that dived into painting the minute they pulled up into her cul-de-sac. We also had a small youth group from a local church paint with us for the first time. So as I said many hands make the job go much faster and because you are having fun doing this the time flies by!

As we started to paint Maria eventually came out of her house to greet everyone and demanded that we all stop. She welcomed us and then said she needed to pray for us so we all had to put down our brushes or rollers and listen. She was very thankful for our large group of adults, teens and little kids. She prayed for us both in Spanish and English. I could sense as she prayed how blessed we were to have met her and now be part of her extended family.

I noticed as we were painting that her neighbor was in a wheelchair and had recently been in an auto accident. Unfortunately she had one of her legs amputated. I had one of my Hispanic friends talk with her about painting her house. She was excited about the potential of us helping her. She explained that she had sons who lived with her that had jobs. When we returned to pick up the ladders and supplies I had Maria talk to her on our behalf. I said that we would actually paint her house in two weeks. Her eyes lighted up and I was thrilled that we could have many manos come to be a blessing to someone that will appreciate this show of kindness.

As we finished painting we had Maria come back outside. We always have the entire group circle around the family of the house that we have painted. We give each family a Bible that everyone that has helped paint signs it. I Had Kim, our key leader, express her thanks first to her group for their help and then to Maria for the opportunity to share God’s love in an amazing fashion. As we finished Maria said with a loud voice, ‘MUCHO THANK YOU’!

We have painted over 90 houses in the last 6 years and every time we finish I have this great sense of blessing and accomplishment. I knew that Maria will become a good friend who will help us find other grandmas that the community can recognize and bless!