#AndAnotherHouse by Audra

#AndAnotherHouse by Audra - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

Two semesters ago I was fortunate enough to go on a Mizzou Alternative Break (MAB) to serve with Habitat for Humanity. The trip is designed for a group of 12 random Mizzou students to go on a service trip to a small community around the country, instead of going on a regular spring break trip. Before the trip I had no idea what I was getting myself into; I had never met any of the people in my group, and I hadn’t a clue what to expect from the trip. I realized quickly that MAB had so much to offer me. It was giving me the opportunity to meet new friends, and more importantly gave me the chance serve people less fortunate than I.

As for my MAB trip, we went to Franklin, West Virginia, which is a small town of less than 800 people that were all stricken with poverty. While there, we worked with Habitat; which is a non-profit organization that works toward building strength and stability in families of need by providing them a decent and affordable home. One of the great things I learned while on my trip was that Habitat doesn’t automatically give the family a home. Habitat needs to know that the family is wanting to get back on their feet, not just get a free home out of the program. This means that Habitat requires the family to help build the house themselves; they must have 500 hours of service on the house to claim it as their own. This trip was such a rewarding experience because our group got to meet the family that was going to live in the house we were working on. It was amazing because we got to hear their story; the wife had been diagnosed with cancer a few months prior, so the only income their family had was coming from the husband. We learned how much Habitat improved their lives, and we saw how thankful they were to have us helping with construction.

Through this trip, I found a new love of serving with Habitat. I can honestly say that my trip to Franklin has been my favorite college memory thus far. Before this trip I never knew I had the courage to do something as big as build a house, nor did I ever imagine strangers could become my best friends so quickly.

After returning home from my MAB trip, the ideas I learned throughout the trip stuck with me. It got me thinking about what I could do within my own community to give back. One of the main mottos of MAB is to ‘bring it home’. To me, this means I should continue to live my life the way I did during the trip. I continued to share my stories of the trip, and explained how much confidence it had given me. My friends realized something about me changed; they kept telling me my face would light up anytime I talked about the trip, and the service I had participated in. They saw how happy contributing to society made me, and pushed me to continue serving the community back in Columbia. I am incredibly blessed to call them my best friends because they saw something in me that I didn’t even know was there. They convinced me to join a service fraternity at Mizzou, and this opened so many doors for me to resume my service to the community. I got the chance to work with the homeless population in Columbia by volunteer at the homeless shelter, and by packaging food at the foodbank every Thursday. I can’t wait to see the new service opportunities this semester brings. This past semester, and my MAB trip has given me so much purpose in my life, and I have decided to continue to work with Habitat; one house at a time