“We Didn’t Have the Money, but We Started Out With Faith”: A Grants Pen Church Builds a Home for a Senior

• Shortwood SDA Church volunteers built a one-bedroom house for a senior
• Work began in February 2021 and keys were due on December 18, 2022
• Carpenters, plumbers and masons from the church worked without charge
• Online giving, including from diaspora members, helped pay for it

Members of the Shortwood Seventh-day Adventist Church in Grants Pen, St Andrew, have spent almost two years building a house for Lurlene Lawson, a senior who had feared she would have to leave Kingston and return to family land in Westmoreland. The Gleaner reported that the church planned to hand over the keys on December 18, 2022.

Ms Lawson moved to Kingston from Westmoreland four decades ago but had fallen on hard times. The idea for the house came from church brother Lloyd Gayle, who shared it with church elder Merlene Tyrell, the congregation’s community services director. The two began the effort in February 2021. A friend, Clarice Williams, obtained permission from the owner of the land in Grants Pen for the house to be built there, and Councillor Winston Ennis provided the initial money, which was used to clear the site.

The labour came from the pews. Carpenters, plumbers, masons and supervisors from the congregation turned up week after week without charge. Mason Carl Bailey designed the one-bedroom unit along the lines of the one-bedroom houses built under the Government’s New Social Housing Project. “We didn’t have the money, but we started out with faith and by faith,” Ms Tyrell said. “Since then, the church has stood behind us until we reach the point now where we are complete. They never hesitated.”

Pastor Lambert Hamilton described the project as a positive to come out of the pandemic, noting that giving through the church’s YouTube and Facebook services, including contributions from members overseas, had made it possible. For Ms Lawson, the result was simple. “I’m feeling happy to know that I am going to get somewhere to live comfortable,” she said. “I thank the brethren and I can’t say thanks enough.”

The project shows what a single congregation can do with skilled members, a small budget and online giving that reaches the diaspora. It also shows the fragile foundation many such homes stand on: the house was built with permission on someone else’s land rather than on land Ms Lawson owns. For churches planning similar projects, securing a lease, title or written agreement for the land is as important as the blocks and steel, so that the home remains secure for the person it was built for.

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