For many Servant Event teams coming to Ysleta Lutheran Mission Human Care (YLM) to do a house-build or repair project, a dinner to celebrate is planned on their last day, and for the seven-member team of St. John Lutheran Church in Covina, California, that planned dinner was for Saturday.

Pastor Curley compliments Laura on all her hard work in providing a home for her children

“We planned for Saturday to be a day of sight-seeing and dinner at Cattleman’s,” Rev. Patrick Curley, pastor of St. John and part of the team, shared on Thursday evening, “But with everything that still needs to get done, we’re going to give up sight-seeing and settle for a rib-eye steak.”

In the end, the St. John team settled for a couple of rotisserie chickens from the nearby Walmart, but they were all pleased at completing tasks, including the plumbing of a sink and toilet.

“This family has been so appreciative of all the work we did,” Lulú, Pastor Curley’s wife, shared while the team waited for the plumbing glue to dry so they could check for leaks, “She cooked for us –my husband especially enjoyed the pozole –and helped us figure out those tricky little corners and stuff.  It was truly a joy to make sure we followed through with everything we set out to accomplish.”

The team enjoying Laura’s pozole for lunch on Friday

Laura Peña, a single mother of four, has been adding on to her house bit by bit, with scraps of leftover materials donated by friends and family.  In this manner, she cobbled together a small bedroom and bathroom to an existing room, which was built up against the tiny mobile home she shared with her children several years back.  While the existing room had a concrete floor, the add-on room and bathroom were both built on pallets and reinforced by wood beams.

“We have three functioning bedrooms,” Laura explained when she came to YLM for help in the winter of 2019, “My elderly parents stay in one of them, my oldest son Joshua in another, while my daughter, Ruby, and twelve-year-old boys, Ignacio and Jesus, sleep with me in my room.”

Walls and flooring were not even, so all sheetrock had to be custom cut to fit.

Her determination to do whatever necessary to provide personal space for her children was evident to the team when they visited on Sunday afternoon.  Pastor Curley pointed out the great work Laura had done and thanked her for allowing them to come and help complete the rooms and bathroom.

“By Monday afternoon, before they took a break from lunch, they had torn down the walls separating the rooms, as well as the bathroom walls, sink, and toilet,” Scott Juengel, the Missions and Ministry Facilitator, explained, “I was not expecting that.”

“It took us longer than we expected,” Kevin, the planning leader of the team, shared on Thursday evening, “The walls and floors are not even, so we had to do a lot of measuring and custom cutting of sheetrock, two by fours, and trim.”

“Thank God for mud and trim,” Pastor Curley exclaimed with joy, “It covers up a multitude of uneven seams and gaps.  It reminds me of grace, how it covers all of our sins so we are seen as perfect by God.”

Somewhere around eight in the evening on Saturday, the majority of the team waited outside for the final verdict of the last project, which was the pipes of the sink and toilet.  Everyone clapped with joy when Jonathan came to the new window of the add-on room, arms up in the air, “There are no leaks!”

They successfully completed a task that seemed monumental when they first saw pictures then visited Laura and her family.  But task by task, bit by bit, the first Servant Event team of 2021 “ate an elephant” and were rewarded in ways they did not expect.