4/1/2007 - NON PROFIT NEIGHBOR
NON PROFIT NEIGHBOR
Hands of Mercy
By Bruce Herwig II
Brian and Sue were your typical Redlands family, loving life, their community and family. With five children Shirlee, 17, Shelby, 15, Cade, 12, Colton, 11 and Shaina, 2, they certainly had their hands full. Brian was the plant manager for a coffee roasting company in Los Angeles and Sue is a certified CA school teacher and taught for 15 years at our local Kingsbury Elementary. Little did they realize that their life was about to be changed.
The first time we came down to Mexico as a family was on a weekend Project Joy trip in December, 2001 to help distribute gifts to needy children and build the first prefabricated loft home in El Zorillo, Brian recalls. The house was built for a widow who had been living where she worked in a tortilla factory. She had kidney disease and was determined to be a poor candidate for dialysis because of her unstable living condition. Her new home allowed her to receive dialysis to extend her life. That little house changed her life and ours as well.
Brian said The Mexico loft home building ministry was different from others in that our whole family could be involved. I also liked that the home could be built in just one day. We began to make the trip down to help almost every month. Jim Powell of Trinity Evangelical Free Church shared a vision with us for a new Christian camp in Mexico where families could stay together on weekends when they did work and ministry projects.
It was out of these trips to Mexico, that Hands of Mercy (HOM) was started. A registered 501c3 Public Charity with an office in Redlands, it was founded by a group wanting to stimulate interest in missions among their fellow churchgoers via first-hand experiences. Their specialty is the loft house.
Brad Richter, a local contractor designed this unique house from scratch. The loft house is a 12 by 12 modular that is pre-built at area churches in their parking lots by volunteers. The structure, once driven to Mexico, is constructed on site. The wooden plywood floor is made in 2 sections and bolted together and set on concrete piers. The loft is the sleeping area with a ladder mounted inside to climb up. Though not luxurious by any definition (you and I would call it a shed), a loft house gives some basic protection and shelter from the elements. And for about $3,000 US, they are quite reasonable to build.
While the McCoys love Redlands, they could not deny the positive changes and impact the Mexico ministry had on their family. We wanted to help others in practical ways and share with them about our faith. After two years of planning, we sold our home on Melbury Ct. and moved to Mexico in September, 2005 to help develop a 600 acre working ranch camp named Rancho Casitas (the ranch of the little houses) said Brian. Our family became full time missionaries with Hands of Mercy in October, 2006 helping co-ordinate the building of these houses with the teams that come to Mexico on weekends to help. We live on the ranch in a yurt (a high tech Mongolian teepee) and two loft houses that serve as bedrooms.
Sue says, Living in the same type of housing that Hands of Mercy gives away to needy families certainly helps us identify with the people that we are trying to serve. Learning to live without some of the conveniences we used to take for granted has been stretching to each of us. We live in a very remote area, few neighbors and no electricityand it does get cold at night. Many of our family and friends come down regularly to help, but the hardest part of the move has been missing those relationships.
So, would you do it all over again? Both the McCoys agree, We really believe God put it on our hearts to serve in Mexico and it has been an adventure. Moving to Mexico has been a blessing, not a sacrifice. Even though we could not see how it would happen, God has provided everything we have needed over and over again.
Hands of Mercy: www.handsofmercy.com
McCoys Blog: http://yurtlife.spaces.live.com
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