Good Space

WORK THREE DAYS UNDER THIS FOREMAN, and it might change your life. José Luis Portillo founded Operación Abrigo more than 30 years ago to build simple, safe homes in the colonias outside Ciudad Juárez where he had grown up as a street vendor. For the tenth year, Good Space, together with fellow Oak Cliff real estate investor Jeff Strong, will organize a trip among volunteer men to spend three days (Jan. 29-Feb. 1) mixing the mortar, hefting the cinder blocks, and raising the rafters that go into the houses. After finishing, Rev. Portillo leads a blessing of our work in the company of the family moving out of a shack of pallets and cardboard and into a one-room house. If interested in joining us, read the Trip Plan and contact either Jeff or David by mid-December.

A MEMORY OF HOME was carved into the utility sink at our current job site by a member of our renovation crew, all of whom hail from Ocampo, Guanajuato in Mexico. A crude but sweet rendering of San Juan Bautista parish.