MONTH IN REVIEW: November 2015

By Chris Johnson,
Director of Communications,

My monthly report is a little late, but for very good reason: I had the opportunity to be a part of the weeklong 10 Years, 10 Homes blitz build in Nicaragua that began in late November and I just returned to the office on Monday. Not only was I able to capture much of the event in photos and soon-to-be released video, but I actually spent a lot of time getting my hands — and pretty much my whole self — dirty as a laborer in the Central American heat. It was good for my soul!

I also had the pleasure of having my wife, Shellie, along for her first-ever Fuller Center Global Builders experience. She has worked with me several times on local builds here in Perry, Georgia, with our new Fuller Center covenant partner here, and has helped out at Fuller Center conferences and such, but this was a first for her. Like many of our volunteers, she had to use vacation time from her work — and, like many of our volunteers, she said afterward that it was totally worth it.

The perspective you get from visiting such places in need and the spiritual lift you get from helping people — especially those amazing families in Nicaragua — is priceless. To learn more about our Global Builders program, click here.

I’m still processing the videos, but here is a link to our Facebook photo album from the build, and here is a link to dozens of downloadable, high-resolution photos grouped into four galleries. Enjoy and share!

Now, just some of the other news from November:

• We opened registration for our TWO Millard Fuller Legacy Builds in 2016 — in Armenia July 17-23 and in Valley, Alabama, September 18-23. Click here to learn more about each or to register.

• President David Snell penned this great message for Thanksgiving about taking it upon yourself to create the kind of joy to be thankful for — kind of a build-your-own gratitude piece.

• In addition to our own Fuller Friday fundraising campaign, there were similar crowdfunding efforts during the month to help our covenant partners raise money for their work, including Giving Tuesday and such local efforts as Georgia Gives Day, through which The Fuller Center of Macon generated a lot of money and attention and led to being featured in this story from WMAZ-TV.

• The Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention asked us to help them with their annual collection of prayers from women around the world and we were happy to help them find a wonderful contributor from Nepal, our friend Karuna Bomzon Tamang of the Women’s and Children’s Ministry from the Belthel Assembly of God Church’s ministries department in Battisputali, Kathmandu. Here is the wonderful prayer she submitted.

• As you can see in this post, we crossed the 10,000-likes mark on Facebook, and our social media reach grows every day.

• We received these photos of new Fuller Center homes going up in Nepal, where we are planning to build 200 new homes as part of a long-term earthquake recovery effort in the Trishuli area.

• Speaking of our work in Nepal, the United Church of Christ stepped forward to support that effort in a huge way, pledging to work toward the funding of 50 of those homes as you can read about in this story.

• Many military veterans are elderly, disabled or otherwise hindered in trying to maintain simple, decent homes, and therefore Fuller Center covenant partners often find themselves partnering with veterans. Nowhere is this more the case than in Peoria, Illinois, as you can see in this great report from WEEK-TV.

• The Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal gives us this story of Beaudell Gilliam, who hoped that her husband would soon be able to get over his physical ailments enough to repair the leaking roof of the home that they had shared for 58 years. She hoped that they could quit catching rain drops in buckets throughout the house and that they could remove the ugly tarps from their roof. Unfortunately, he did not get better, and when he died, Beaudell believed she would have to abandon the home that she so loved. Then The Fuller Center got involved.

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