Volunteers Assemble Homes Bound for Mexico

Volunteers are packing their bags for a trip to Mexico scheduled on Friday following a weekend spent assembling walls and basic elements of a home that will benefit families in need.

The rainy weekend forecast did not stop members of Calvary Church of Pacific Palisades from measuring, marking, sawing and stacking.

They labored under canopies to prepare enough lumber to build three “loft houses” for homeless families near Ensenada. Friday was the first day of their building preparation.

“I love to help other people,” said Calvary volunteer Andrew Doubroff who worked on the cutting crew during the storm. “That’s part of what we’re supposed to do here is help other people, especially the poor.”

Home construction made easy is the specialty of Redlands-based Hands of Mercy, which provides specifications and instructions to church partners.

“We’ve come up with essentially a plan that can be duplicated from church to church to church,” explained Hands of Mercy pre-build coordinator Jeff Caulkins. “We take people that are not construction people and we can teach them how to do this without having any construction knowledge.”

“Basically, we’re making a kit,” said Caulkins. Volunteers assemble floors, walls, roof gables and doors, which are loaded onto trailers and delivered to Mexico where set up will be quick, simple and completed in a single day.

The 12-by-12-feet loft houses can accomodate families of four or five who may have been living under plywood boards or tarps and cardboard in the poorest sections of Ensenada. The houses have unfinished interiors and lack plumbing, but they are permanent structures. Local ministers work with Hands of Mercy to identify the area’s neediest families.

“What’s great for us is that there are churches down there that are doing the work,” said Amen Bains, the director of church relations at Calvary. “There’s local ministry happening continually so it feels better that we’re not just shooting in and out.”

Bains has gone to Ensenada for Hands of Mercy projects half a dozen times with both his church “small group” and with the whole church. Building supplies are purchased out of the church’s outreach budget, which he oversees. Travel and transportation costs are defrayed by a small fee charged to each of the volunteers on the trip. The cost per house totals about $3,000.

By Saturday morning in the Palisades, with the rain in abeyance, loft house components were spread out across parking lot. Families with children as young as 8 years old were working together, hammering nails and packing housewares. About 70 to 80 church members were anticipated to pitch in throughout the morning.

Donovan Scott was there with this two oldest children, Riley, 10, and Savannah, 8, doing “whatever Hands of Mercy people tell us to,” he said with a laugh. Scott also worked on the pre-build and went down to Mexico last year.

“It’s very fulfilling," he said. "You feel like you’re really doing something to help people out.  There’s so many in need. When you go down there you come back with a real appreciation for what you you actually have,” said Scott.

Riley wanted join his Dad for the build in Mexico but was deemed too young for the job. He came along for the pre-build.

“It’s helping the people who are less fortunate and it’s fun,” said Riley, but admitted, “it’s a lot of hard work and it’s also very tiring.”

After a few hours of work, the walls, floors and roof panels were ready for loading onto trailers, one house per trailer.

Next weekend, construction volunteers will drive the pre-built components down to the Hands of Mercy ranch in Mexico, where workers will spend their nights before and after the build.

“It’s amazing to pull into Ensenada, you pull out of the camp and you get to the villages where they actually are being built,” said Travis Taylor, worship director at Calvary. “You look up in the foothills and there’s tons of these homes. It’s really cool to see the impact they’ve made.”

Together with Southern California churches and school groups, Hands of Mercy has built more than 800 homes. The houses may stand for years, sheltering successive families. Some residents have altered the structures, adding pocket showers or additional rooms.

Along with the houses, the Calvary Church group will be delivering curtains and rods, propane hotplates, sleeping bags, groceries, hygiene supplies, and Spanish bibles, all donated by church members from a wish list supplied by the pastors in Ensenada.

About 30 construction volunteers will travel to Mexico. “We try to take about ten per house,” said Bains. “We’ve taken as many as 65 before. It just depends on the year.”

At the ranch, volunteers will spend their nights in the same kind of loft houses they will construct. On their first morning in Mexico, they will be greeted by the families whose houses will be built that day.

“We want the family to be involved in building their house,” said Bains. “We’re not there to serve them and do it for them. We want to partner with them.”

The groups will eat breakfast and pray together before driving out to the construction sites. The structures will be erected on concrete piers to make them easy to lift up and move, in case the family needs to relocate. Once the dwelling is completed, builders and homeowners circle the house, join hands and offer praise and thanks.

“We pray and bless the house,” said Baines. “And the family usually jumps in and prays with us and they just kind of give praise that they have a roof over their heads now and a floor to sleep on and they’re not sleeping on the ground and in tents.”