“I have been blessed with health and happiness, good friends and family. It is important to give back, and since I love building, this is an excellent way to do it.”

Without people like Ron Kuhn, Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s home building program would not be nearly as successful as it is. Ron is a volunteer on the regular crew called “Bud’s Bunch” at Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity. A regular crew is a group of the same volunteers that donate their time together weekly. Because of the weekly routine, regular crews give build sites consistency, dependability and often a higher skilled volunteer pool.

It all started with a dream; an actual dream.

Melissa Jeanson, 26, barely knew about Habitat for Humanity when she woke up one morning and reached for her laptop. She had been dreaming that someone was teaching her how to build a house. She looked up Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity (TCHFH) and discovered WomenBuild.

“There are three stages of retirement. There’s the Go-Go, the Slow-Go, and the No-Go. You don’t know how you’re going to transition.”

“While in the Go-Go phase, you do what you can,” explained John Winters. If ever there was an appropriate to way personify “Go-Go,” it would involve John and his wife Barb. John, a retired 3M engineer, and Barb, a retired special education teacher, seem to have barely stopped to take a breath since their retirement in 1998. But sitting still and letting life pass by was never part of the plan for this dynamic duo.