By the Inside Outreach team · November 5, 2023It was a tight squeeze. A steep driveway, a narrow path, and a small house on a trailer that had to go up it without tipping over.
Well, we prayed and Jesus gave the push. The boys got it done. The home tilted side to side the whole way up and held firm like a rock. At the top an aunty was waiting, so grateful she gave the glory to God right there in the yard.
Now her ʻohana has an extra place to house family who lost their homes in the fire.
Why a tiny home?
Here’s something people on the mainland don’t always get. Houses in Hawaiʻi are small. After Lahaina, families were taking in 12 or 15 displaced relatives under one roof. That works for a week. It doesn’t work for a year.
The other option was shipping people to hotels or off island. Away from their church, their school, their jobs, their neighbors. Away from everything that makes Lahaina Lahaina.
So Hui Homes had a better idea. Build small homes and give them free to families who could put them in their own backyard. Keep people in their community. Keep ʻohana together.
Many hands
We partnered with Hui Homes, River of Life Mission and Made in Hope. More than 500 volunteers worked on these homes. In the end, more than 34 of them went to families, free.
Josue came over from River of Life to help for two weeks. He stayed two years. Today he’s our director.
A truck and a Christmas
Around the same time an Oʻahu family donated a 2008 Ford F-350. We shipped it to Pastor Steve at Calvary Chapel Westside. That truck has been moving people out of hotels into homes ever since.
“This truck, it’s been just a blessing.”
Pastor Steve, Calvary Chapel Westside
And that Christmas, because of you, $10,000 in gift cards went to Lahaina families. River of Life and Calvary Chapel Westside handed them out.
Why keeping people home matters
When a town burns, the fastest way to lose it for good is to scatter its people. Kids change schools. Parents take jobs somewhere else. Kūpuna end up far from the family that takes care of them. A year later, a lot of them never come back.
A small home in a relative’s backyard isn’t a mansion. But it’s a door that locks, a bed that’s yours, and a way to stay close to church, school and work while the long rebuild happens. That’s the whole point.
Rebuilding a whole town takes years. Permits, insurance, debris removal, contractors, materials shipped across the ocean. Nobody gets to skip the line. A small home in the backyard means a family doesn’t have to wait somewhere far away while all of that happens. They get to wait at home.
What it took
Every one of those homes took materials, trailers, fuel, a crew and a lot of prayer to get up driveways like this one. None of it happens without people giving.
We get asked all the time if giving really makes a difference. Go stand at the top of that driveway with that aunty. Then ask again.
Mahalo to Hui Homes, River of Life, Made in Hope, One Love Hawaiʻi and the West Maui Community Alliance. And to every person who gave so a family could stay home.
