John and Juanita Townsell made Thursday nights sacred. With six kids, chaos was always close, so they carved out one night a week just for family.
On one of those Thursday nights, Juanita asked her oldest son to scoot back from the TV. Seconds later, shots from a drive-by shooting rang out. She and all six children crawled together from the living room to the bedroom to take cover.
When the shooting stopped, they crept back out. That's when they saw a bullet had traveled clean through the entertainment center stopping just inches from where their oldest son had been sitting moments before. That was the night everything changed.
Juanita had heard about Habitat for Humanity from a friend. She volunteered first, to learn more and what she found felt like an answer to a prayer. When they were accepted as a partner family, she dropped to her knees in thanksgiving.
In 1996, John and Juanita Townsell became the 12th Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County homeowners. They have since paid off their mortgage in full and those six children who crawled across that living room floor in fear grew up in a home defined by safety, stability, and hard work thanks to Mom, Dad and Habitat for Humanity of St. Joseph County.
Together, we build.
Ambrea was at work when her phone rang on the break table. She ran to answer it.
She had been accepted into the Habitat for Humanity homeownership program.
"When can you come in?" they asked.
"Whenever," she said. "I'll come right now."
As a single mom, finding a place to call home for her daughters felt urgent but out of reach. So, when she saw a Habitat post on Facebook one day, she didn't scroll past it. She went to the meeting instead because she was afraid it was too good to be true.
Now Ambrea is a homeowner, and she helped build it herself, literally. Through Habitat's sweat equity program, she helped construct the very walls that went into her house. It wasn’t a free home. She has a mortgage to pay. But what the process has given her goes beyond four walls, it has taught her how to be a homeowner.
Her daughters will always have a place to call home. She made sure of it. And she didn’t do it alone.
Together, we build.
Cleora Taylor is a city employee, a mother of four, and by her own words, "just a statistic."
That's what she told herself when a friend suggested she apply to Habitat for Humanity. She was a single mom paying more than $800 a month in rent, not including utilities, with four kids at home. She didn't think she would qualify for something like Habitat.
Cleora was at work when she saw the number come up on her phone. She already knew. She broke down right there during her shift.
Through the sweat equity process, she didn't just wait for a home to be handed to her. She put in the windows and put up the siding. She can point to pieces of the house and say, "I did that."
Today, Cleora knows exactly what she spends on housing every month. That kind of stability means she can plan ahead, sign her kids up for activities, and focus on them rather than on keeping the lights on.
She is not a statistic. She is a homeowner. And she helped build it.
Together, we build.
Nusrat Zahan came to the United States from Bangladesh in 2003. For more than twenty years, she called an apartment home. Her son Nishorgo had never known anything else.
Nusrat explored the housing market and couldn't see a path to ownership on her income. It was a coworker who told her about Habitat for Humanity. She applied, waited four months, and got the call.
Ask Nishorgo what the new home means to him and he doesn't hesitate: he finally had space to run around and be a kid, instead of being trapped in an apartment for ‘all eternity.’
Nusrat puts it a little differently. In all her years in this country, she says, she has never had an opportunity like this one.
And she was involved in every part of it.
Together, we build.
The Salazars almost didn't make it.
When Benito and Jhunixa first applied to Habitat for Humanity, they were told they didn't qualify. It was a real disappointment. But Jhunixa, a social worker who had been passing Habitat information along to her own clients, wasn't ready to let it go. She went back through the paperwork and found a mistake.
They resubmitted. They went through the numbers again. And the phone rang.
It took a moment to sink in. After the first rejection, wrapping their minds around actually owning a home was its own kind of process.
Then came sweat equity. Benito and Jhunixia showed up to the construction site and got to work, literally sweating for their house. And their children were watching.
That's the part that stays with them. Their kids are growing up in a home they can point to and say we helped build that. That kind of pride doesn't come from being handed something. It comes from fighting for it, finding the mistake, resubmitting, and showing up.
Together, we build.