Office of Public Relations
Missouri Baptist University
One College Park Drive
Saint Louis, Missouri 63141-8698
314.392.2307 / fax 314.392.2265
www.mobap.edu / pr@mobap.edu
For Immediate Release
RE: Thankful
Thankful
November 20, 2006
Thanks in part to a group of Missouri Baptist University students, the McPherson family of St. Louis have a home to call their own this Thanksgiving.
“This place is just going to change our lives,” said Lamont McPherson, as he touched up a wall in his new home with some paint last Saturday. “We just feel so very blessed.”
Lamont and his wife, Wendy, along with their two daughters, Lashonda, 21, and Lamonica, 16, are one of twenty families set to purchase their first home this winter through Habitat for Humanity St. Louis in the City’s JeffVanderLou neighborhood. Those twenty homes are located adjacent to twenty homes Habitat built in 2004.
Habitat is a nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry that finds local volunteers and funding to help provide single-family housing for needy families. Besides putting in more than 450 required hours of “sweat equity,” the McPherson family will buy their home through an interest-free loan.
MBU students have been there from beginning to end. In August, when the McPherson house was a mere frame of wood and slab of concrete, more than fifty MBU students helped move plywood and 2x4s in the JeffVanderLou development. On a cold Saturday this past November, a group of MBU students again spent the day at the development. This time, they were installing the final pieces of trim inside the now nearly completed McPherson home.
“It’s really quite a gift to me to be able to in someway help this family complete their dream home,” said MBU Junior Clayton McKibbin, as he measured a piece of trim inside the home’s basement. “It’s helping people, and as a Christian that’s what I am called to do.”
The final touches of paint Lamont put on his new home last Saturday signified the end of months of arduous work and, more importantly, years of prayer.
Since last August, the McPherson family, beside a multitude of volunteers, has worked hundreds of hours and watched their three-bedroom, two-story home take form before their very eyes.
But the McPherson family has been waiting for their own place for much longer than the few months it’s taken to build their house.
The McPherson’s have been dreaming of Dec. 16, the long-awaited move in day, for a lifetime.
“We got really close to being able to buy a home three different times. Every time, something happened at the last minute and the deal fell through” Lamont said. “When my wife told me she was going to apply for Habitat, to be honest I didn’t have much confidence.”
That was then. Lamont’s wife, Wendy, proudly walked through her new home last Saturday, graciously showing off each room’s uniqueness –from the laminate floors that adorn much of the house to the trendy, pewter light fixtures in the dining room.
“Aren’t these lights so pretty,” she said, pointing to a chandelier. “I think they’ll hang down even further if we want them it to.”
For MBU freshman Toneisha Garrett, helping Wendy’s dream become a reality made her day worthwhile.
“I really just wanted to do this for the family,” said Garrett, a member of the University’s Lacrosse team. “It’s a time to help others. It’s a way I can help give this family a wonderful gift during the Holiday season.”
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Missouri Baptist University is a premier Christian university in Saint Louis, offering graduate and undergraduate studies in over thirty specialized fields and nine degrees. MBU's education and fine arts programs are nationally known in addition to business, religion, administration of justice, and more. MBU is one of the fastest growing higher education institutions in Missouri with an enrollment of over 4,500 students at five locations in the bi-state region — West County, Lincoln County, Jefferson County, Franklin County and the new Illinois extension at Lewis and Clark Community College.
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