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While Thrivent Builds Homes focuses on the U.S., Thrivent Builds Worldwide will fund and coordinate volunteers to construct an additional 200 homes internationally. Thrivent Builds Giving will promote and supplement financial gifts necessary for the homes, and Thrivent Builds Neighborhoods will offer six grants of up to $1 million to improve entire neighborhoods.
Thrivent Builds Mobile, a 48-foot semi truck, will travel to Lutheran congregations and events nationwide to raise awareness of poverty housing. Complete with leaky faucets and moldy walls, the mobile educational unit brings to life the reality of substandard housing conditions that as many
as 30 million U.S. households experience.
In response to Hurricane Katrina, Thrivent pledged an additional $5 million to rebuild homes in the Gulf Coast. Thrivent also is enhancing members’ gifts with $1 for every $2 given and expects to raise up to $6 million through this collaboration.
For more information, visit www.thriventbuilds.com.
To the 6-year-old, it’s where Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the
Tooth Fairy know to find you. To the teenager, it’s where math problems
and English papers fall prey to Internet and iPods. To the parent, it’s
where refrigerator drawings steal your heart, backyard bruises wreck
your nerves, and little boys and girls grow up too fast.
Can such a home be built?
Witness the construction of a Habitat house, and there’s no denying
that it can. Reinforced with love and sweat, these simple frame
structures are built for Christmas mornings and cold nights alike. And
this summer and fall, Lutherans played a major part in their
development.
Through Thrivent Builds Homes, a new program to
combat substandard housing in the U.S., members of ELCA, Lutheran
Church–Missouri Synod and Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
congregations worked alongside future homeowners and Habitat for
Humanity staff to build homes in the Chicago and Detroit areas.
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
