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Hammer Time — No matter where you live or what motivates you, there is a role with Thrivent Builds for a volunteer just like you.
By Jennifer Krempin
Hansville, Washington
It’s a ‘God Thing’
 Five-year-old Cheyanne Beninger is dreaming in pink and purple. Her 7-year-old brother Trysten is more of a military-and-camouflage kind of guy. For the first time, they will soon have their own rooms to decorate.
Since marrying nine years ago, their parents, Neoma and Lucas, have struggled to make ends meet. Most recently, they were living in an unsafe, crime-filled neighborhood. The Beningers took a leap of faith to apply for a Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity home and were stunned to be chosen from among 100 applicants. “Prayer works!” Neoma exclaims.
Today, they are eagerly anticipating their new Thrivent Builds with Habitat home in Hansville, Washington. Top on Neoma’s list: A safe place for the kids to play and “a little piece of earth to grow things in.”
Neoma, who serves as youth director at Memorial Lutheran Church, planned to take her youth group to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, only to discover that the home they will be working on is hers. “It’s a God thing,” Neoma says of the coincidence. “We are just so blessed!”
Billings, Montana
If You Build It, They Will Drive
 Long before they drive that first nail, Paula Morrison and her group of women friends will have driven more than 250 miles. Morrison, a Lutheran community services specialist for Thrivent Financial, and her friends are making plans to drive to Billings, Montana, to participate in a weekend’s worth of Thrivent Builds volunteering. Hailing from Loring, Montana—just 17 miles from the Canadian border—they are “used to driving the distance in anything we do!” Morrison says with a laugh.
Not only that, but Morrison plans to make it a family affair, inviting her daughter from 250 miles away in Wyoming and two sisters from 130 miles south of Billings to participate in a construction-filled “girls’ weekend.”
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