The Time is Near! 

Happy New Year!  My prayer for the New Year is that your home will be blessed…

I know that the Wilke family will feel blessed if YOU will lay hands on their home.  In 3 short weeks, we’ll begin the St Mark’s Habitat House.  The Build will run from January 24^th to April 18^th and it is time to start signing up for the workdays.  Remember this is the largest Social Ministry project in the 100 years of St Mark’s.  This gift to our community is a wonderful way to honor those saints who built this church 100 years ago.  We’ve been very faithful to the spirit of this gift throughout the 2008 fundraising part of this project.  Our St Mark’s home will be 1 of 10 new, family-owned Habitat Homes to help resurrect the neighborhood along Sharpe St. in Mooresville.  This effort is in keeping with the positive impact this church has had on our community for 100 years.

Now that we’re beginning the Build itself, we need another faithful response from our church.  We already have one of the best Habitat Teams and we’re asking them to really step up.  They’ll be a solid foundation for this project.  But, we will need help.  You can sign up to work with our regular team or you can sign up your own small group but the key here is sign up…to sign up early and to sign up often.  Everyone over the age of 16, whether you are or are not experienced, is welcome on the worksite.  Habitat will provide the tools, the materials and the training.

This Build is a big undertaking to put on a few people.  But, if you think about it, 14 weeks flies by.  This house will be done before you know it so don’t put off your involvement.  This is going to be an awesome experience and you don’t want it to get away. 

I want to tell you about the ways you can sign up and the ways you can follow our progress.  First, we have sign-up sheets available in the Narthex.  We have a sheet for each workday and it would be a huge help for you to sign up just as soon as you know you can help on that particular date.  We need to know what dates are covered and for what dates we need to recruit.  Also, we have 2 additional sign-up sheets.  These are for a Weekday Pool and a Weekend Pool.  If you feel that you can’t commit to a particular date in advance but you want to be involved at some point, put your name and contact info on these sheets.  We’ll use the pool to recruit for those dates that are short of volunteers.  If you do sign up in advance for a couple of dates, you might still want to add your name to the pool as well.  Perhaps you’ll be able to help on some other date as needed.

These same sign-up sheets are available online.  If you go to our home page at saintmarkslutheran.com, you’ll find a section on the right of the page about Habitat.  This section includes a link to the Volunteer Sign-up page where you can sign up for any workday or for the pools.

You can also follow our progress online by using the link on the home page to the Habitat Blog.  As we get into the Build, you’ll find articles and pictures of our progress.

As you’ve heard me say before, the Spirit really is present on a Habitat Build.  Don’t take my word for it.  Ask someone else who has worked with Habitat.  I’m confident they’ll tell you the same thing.  Our St Mark’s Habitat House really will be God’s Love in Action.  Please, sign up…