A Humbling Gesture from Habitat for Humanity

Share

An aerial view of Fenway Park, with view of skyscrapers behind it

We are exhorted to give without thought of receiving anything in return.

When we participated in Habitat’s Orgill Trade Show pack up in August, we never expected anything in return. Imagine our surprise and delight when Habitat offered us Red Sox tickets! Maria Pelaggi (one of our Business Development Associates), quarterbacked our volunteer effort, so she and VJ Tocci attended the September 20th game; all courtesy of Advil who donated the tickets to Habitat.

This is VJ’s experience:

While waiting to be escorted out on the field with approximately 30 other “Happy Habitater’s” in our slick “BUILD – Habitat for Humanity” baseball shirts (my son, Tino, proudly wore it to school on Monday) – my son Lucas asked, “Hey, Dad – how did this all happen?” I told him “You know how the bible says, give without any thought of getting something back and your reward will be ten-fold?” He nodded (although, I’m not sure he did know – but he wanted to hear “how did this all happen” and didn’t need to get caught up in a side dialogue on scripture), I explained “Maria, myself, Uncle John, Aunt Lila, and Laura helped Habitat for Humanity by wrapping up donations and helping them stock their store. Last year this resulted in Habitat Boston raising enough money to build a house for a family who needed one. Pretty cool, huh? Then Habitat called Tocci saying they’d like to reward all of the people that did a good and cheerful job and helped Habitat this past year (I threw the “cheerful” part in because it was self-serving – to get these pesky kids to work around the house with a good attitude is darn near impossible) so they were giving free tickets to the ballgame. The tickets were courtesy of Advil and I’m not sure of the connection to Habitat for Humanity. Treating the aches and pains that go with building?

Probably an “unstoppable” kind of day. We all remember the first time that we ever saw Fenway Park. Well, now they got a chance to be on the field with 15,000-20,000 (hey, it was pregame) people clapping for them. Really a neat moment. Thank you Habitat!