In this heartwarming episode, Angie Austin welcomes Margie and Don Cook, the remarkable founders of Hands on Houses. We delve into their decade-long journey of building low-cost, sustainable homes for widows and single mothers across impoverished parts of the world. Their compassionate work not only provides shelter but also reinforces a sense of community and self-worth among those left overlooked by society. Learn how their mission has expanded globally from India to places like Nepal, Zambia, and the Philippines.
Welcome to The Good News with Angie Austin. Now, with The Good News, here’s Angie.
SPEAKER 06 :
hello friend it’s angie austin here with the good news and the good news is that i have two friends joining us that i’ve known now for i think around a decade and i finally got to meet them in person you hear me oftentimes talk about my radio friends and people that i’ve known for years like even jim stovall who i talk to every week we haven’t met in person yet almost last summer but i didn’t get to meet him and and he’s my mentor you know i mean he’s he’s the man for me Well, two other people whom I greatly admire. In fact, I posted something recently that said I have interviewed thousands of people. I have worked for every major television network and I’ve been doing my radio show now for 13, 14 years. And so thousands of people that I’ve interviewed on TV and radio. And I put Margie and Don Cook in the top five of the most interesting people. people that i’ve ever interviewed in terms of not only are they interesting but their life’s work is so beneficial to others and all of the effort that they put into every day benefits others so much that i feel like when you talk about you know being a christian and you want to be the hands and feet you know of god and go out and do things that make a difference i feel like you don and margie are really the hands and feet because every day those little hands and feet are working
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s amazing, Angie. Thank you.
SPEAKER 04 :
The strange thing is, Angie, that we’re really having lots of fun.
SPEAKER 06 :
I know that. I know that. I was so thrilled that we got to have dinner recently in my neck of the woods with my husband and with my daughter, Faith, and they got to learn about your work. So for people that don’t know about your work, your nonprofit is called Hands on Houses and And before we get into how you started, because some people may have heard over the years how you got started in this work, what exactly does Hands On Houses do? Who wants to tackle that one?
SPEAKER 03 :
We build houses, small, low-cost houses, Angie, for women, very needy women in different parts of the world. They may be widows and treated badly in their communities, or they could be single mothers. and have children and have great needs. They stay in houses that you probably would not put your dog into. They are falling to pieces, full of black mold, leaking. Sometimes they have snakes in the roof and scorpions. And these poor women have no money. They live from day to day, do menial work just to put food on the table, and they can never afford to buy a home or build a home. So we call it the impossible dream for them when they are given a home completely free, and it signifies to them and their community that it’s the love of God that has enabled this home to be given to them. And that is an amazing thing for non-Christian communities to see.
SPEAKER 06 :
And that’s the interesting thing, too. You’re working in many non-Christian communities, and one thing that Don had told me in the past, When working in India, he was an engineer. He’s like, how can I build these faster, better, cheaper? And thought, oh, in a factory or whatever. But then he realized that actually building the home in the town and getting to interface and have the camaraderie in the community of building the home in the community with other people coming over to help. you know, to help the widow and the widow’s family, helping maybe the children joining in, that there was such a sense of community that worked out building the home better on site so that it was a community process. And in India, one thing that Don and Margie taught me is that they had learned that the widows are like throwaway people, that the villages don’t even want them because they’re considered very unlucky, the widows that have lost their husbands. And when Margie says they live in a house you wouldn’t put your dog in, I mean, that is not a stretch. For us here in the US, I think the best description that I could give someone of what these houses look like, they’re not houses that they’re currently living in. It’s more of like a homeless encampment, like you’ve taken trash and you’re living in a homeless encampment and you’ve maybe taken a tarp and some sticks and maybe an old lawn chair and some old pots or, you know, cups from 7-Eleven that you’re using, you know, as your cups in your in your shack. And so they build kind of a little shantytown, you know, kind of lean to with tarps and such. They’re not homes. it’s like a homeless encampment home so that’s the way i and you’re right i wouldn’t let my dog live in the the homes that these women and sometimes their children are living in until you build these houses do i have that about right yeah no that’s true yeah the um
SPEAKER 04 :
I mean, in India, we did most of our work for the first 14 years in Southeast India, where the people are living out of huts that are made out of palm branches mainly. They might have little mud walls about two foot high around the bottom, but their roof is made out of palm branches. And the palm branches don’t last. They technically want to replace them every 10 years or so. They have to buy palm branches in India. They don’t just go and pick palm branches off some tree nearby. It’s a financial burden just to even keep the hut, you know, working as best it can. So it really has been quite shocking to see what people have had to sort of get by with, Angie. So, yeah, and, you know, the cultural thing on top of that where widows – I think about 300 years ago, the widows were required to be burnt alive on their husband’s funeral pyres. It was just such a horrible situation that they were in. That has stopped, but they still are seen as bad luck and looked down upon. And when a lady loses her husband, in the sort of local culture, they’ll have a special ceremony where they will break the bangles that she’s wearing and rip her wedding necklace off her neck and publicly degrade them just because they’ve now become a widow and take all their possessions away from them too. So it really is very serious the way that widows are treated in India and in other parts of the world too. Now you mentioned, go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
I was going to say one added advantage of building for a young widow who’s got children, school-going children, and that happens pretty often in India is is that those children probably are going to be able to get a far better education, continue with their education, and maybe even be able to do some sort of tertiary education because they have had a house they can go into and close the door and study. Whereas if they don’t have that… They aren’t able to concentrate, they have too many distractions, and they sort of end up the education at a young age. So that’s a big advantage because the children are, for the widow, they are like an insurance policy. In a way, they could look after their mother, depending on what religion they’re following. So, you know, education is important.
SPEAKER 06 :
And in terms of, you mentioned you started out in India and that you’ve expanded. When we met for dinner, you told me that your work now is all over the world. So can you tell us a little about how that happened and where you are now?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, when we left India in March of 2020, We had to get out of India because of the COVID epidemic. And we came back to the States and stayed with our son, Andy, and his wife, Carla, who work with us. They’re part of our team. Things continued in India for like three months. And then they ran out of building supplies. And we just thought maybe hands-on houses was going to close down. We didn’t know what the future held. Nobody did at that time. And We really weren’t sure what was going to happen. But then God gave us a scripture in Isaiah about expanding the ten pigs, expanding your vision. And we realized that he was wanting us to look further afield to actually have a bigger vision. And so we started brainstorming with Andy and Carla and praying. And then we started contacting possible partners. And that’s the way it’s gone over the last five years. We now have partners in India, three different partners, four different partners in India. We have partners in Nepal and Sri Lanka, in Africa and Zambia. in the Philippines, and we’ve built a house in El Salvador and a couple of houses in Argentina.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, my goodness. So you really are all over the world now. Goodness gracious. Wow.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we’re looking for new partners for next year, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, so for people who do want to partner with you, if you want to see the work they’re doing, it’s handsonhouses.com. And in order to see the houses and everything, do they need to sign in?
SPEAKER 04 :
No, the website is open. What we normally do is we communicate directly with a potential partner and then we’ll show them photographs of the houses we built and discuss how the partnership might work. So it’s a… It’s a bit of a process. And what we found is that we’ve actually got to work with some amazing new partners all over the world and that we’re actually excited about what they’re trying to do. And so our approach is that How can we help you do better what you’re already doing as the sort of partner that we’re looking for?
SPEAKER 06 :
And in terms of what a home costs, is there a general price? I know now, since you’re in different countries, it may vary, but is there a general price that you ask for when you’re trying to get someone to donate a home? Which, by the way, you don’t have to donate that much. You could just go on and there’s a donation button. You can donate with PayPal or however you want to donate one time, or you could do a monthly donation. But if someone said, hey, I want to build a house… How much would that be?
SPEAKER 04 :
Our average price is $6,000 for a house. The prices do vary from country to country, and we’re currently trying to just work with an average price that evens out over the spread of houses that we build. And we’re finding that in some of the new countries we started to look at, like in the Balkans, the house prices may be sort of a lot more than what that is. And so that’s one of the things we’re currently trying to sort of get our minds around is should we keep an average price and just limit ourselves to what we can do with that price? Or should we start looking at… raising funds for specific houses that are going to cost more. So that’s a decision we’ve got to make fairly soon. But Angie, at the moment, we’re working on $6,000 per house.
SPEAKER 03 :
And we’ve got the Christmas challenge on at the moment. I always do that in November, December of every year. And people donate houses then. And that is actually the price of a house currently, $6,000.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, that kind of goes to show you how poor the communities are that you can actually build a, you know, I mean, I’ve seen these houses. They’re like in the U.S., we call them little houses, although yours even look sturdier than the little houses. But, I mean, this is a legitimate home for, you know, a family, a widow and her children to live in and, you know, small. But it just shows you how poor the communities are that they can actually build a house for $6,000. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 03 :
And as Don said, it varies basically on the cost of the building materials and the labor.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’ve also realized that the people getting these houses, they believe that that’s probably the only house they’re ever going to get. And so we try to make sure that it’s going to last as long as possible. They might not maintain it as well as we’d like them to maintain it, but They don’t have money to do that. So we really need to try to make sure that whatever we build is going to last for at least 20 years. So that’s also part of our sort of thinking in providing the house.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, one of the ones I saw recently was definitely like a cinder block, looking how it was very cement, like a giant cinder block. Now I get it. Like if they can’t do maintenance, you want to make this thing as sturdy as you can, and you don’t need to paint it every year or replace wood or do much roof replacement, and that you want it to last for 20 years. All right, give us the website again, handsonhouses.com. Is that right? That’s correct, yeah. All right, so the Christmas campaign is going, and if you click on the Donate button, you can see all kinds of different ways to donate, but also you can look at the houses they built as well. All right, I’ll have you back again soon. Thank you so much, Margie and Don Cook, HandsOnHouses.com.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, Angie. God bless you. God bless you.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 08 :
Colby, Kansas is listening to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 06 :
Hello there, friend. Angie Austin and Grace Fox here with the good news. And today we are talking about her book, Finding Hope in Crisis, Devotions for Calm and Chaos. And we’re focusing on rest because this can be such a stressful and worrisome time of year for many people. And they don’t really get into the reason for the season because they’re too stressed out and running around worrying about everybody else and the lists and the crowds and the shopping and the travel and etc. Welcome back to you, Grace Fox.
SPEAKER 08 :
Thank you, Angie. It’s good to be back.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. So you had your big trip to Egypt, and you got to minister to a bunch of middle school-aged girls. And have you settled back in after that big trip, visiting with all those refugees and delivering all those wonderful gifts to them and items that will just help them in their everyday life?
SPEAKER 08 :
I have. But it’s been very interesting, Angie, because… Seriously, I have never slept so much in all my adult life as I have in the past week. Yeah. And I know jet lag is always a thing. And for me, it was a 10-hour time difference. And so they say when you travel, expect to take one day of recovery time per hour of time change. So 10 hours of time change would be, it’s going to take at least 10 days before the body settles back into your routine time. Really? So there’s that. But I’m still recovering from surgery that I had in October. And so I have learned to rest, like to listen to my body. And instead of just jumping back into my normal get up early in the morning, go to the gym, work out. I have said if my body needs to rest, I’m going to respect that need to rest.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you’re an early riser worker outer. What time do you normally get up and go to the gym?
SPEAKER 08 :
Okay, I’m almost embarrassed to say, but I get up at 4 to just spend my quiet time, and then I go to the gym at 5, and I’m home by 10 after 6 because we always have a Zoom prayer meeting with our UF ministry office staff at 7 every morning. Unbelievable.
SPEAKER 06 :
Embarrassed. You should be so proud. By like 10 after 6, you’re home from the gym?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s just the way we have to roll in order to make it all work.
SPEAKER 06 :
That is insane. And you’re a grandma. You’re not 20. Right.
SPEAKER 08 :
I am 67. So I’m just finding the older I get, the harder it is to keep on top of this.
SPEAKER 06 :
You’re actually not that old. But, you know, I still, wow, I’m dumbfounded because that’s what time I used to get up a little bit earlier, like 2.45 a.m. But yeah. That killed me. So I can’t imagine doing that voluntarily, but okay. So since you’ve been back and you know, you had the surgery, you went to Egypt, you came home, you had the 10 hours time difference. You need 10 days to recover. So you’ve been sleeping in or just taking naps. Like how are you recovering and resting?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’ve been going to bed earlier. So I’ve been going to bed say nine o’clock, but I’m realizing I’m sleeping nine hours. And you act like never a lot.
SPEAKER 06 :
What do you normally sleep?
SPEAKER 08 :
I’ve been able to get by on five and a half or six. That’s really what I have been functioning on for years, and I do fine.
SPEAKER 06 :
Five and a half hours?
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, and I’ve done fine with that. Seriously, I do well. I’ve had no issues.
SPEAKER 06 :
And you don’t take a nap on five and a half hours sleep? Never.
SPEAKER 08 :
I never take a nap.
SPEAKER 06 :
You are blowing my mind. I sleep nine hours every night, and, oh, my gosh, you’re embarrassed. I’m embarrassed. And I take a nap.
SPEAKER 08 :
Well, I’m just realizing that there is this body’s need for rest and recovery, right? Because for me, recovering from surgery, too, like we heal when we sleep. So whatever is going on in our bodies, we need to listen to that. But, boy, I’m learning that. And then we enter this whole busy season of getting ready for Christmas. I know in the States you just celebrated Thanksgiving and all that stuff. And I just feel like, well, our, our bodies, our minds, our emotions, everything. Don’t we just come to a place sometimes where we need to respect our, everything’s need to just pull back and have a little bit of quiet and rest. And that might not mean literally going to bed, but it just might mean pulling back and just setting aside maybe some of the busyness. If we can simplify that, And rest in that way too. Just, just learn what is really necessary during this busy time. And what can I do to simplify my life? Whether it be letting go of a tradition or cooking a simpler menu when company comes or whatever the case is, how, what can we do to exhale and just give ourselves that, that space to rest?
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow. Well, um, the nine hours yeah it was a big deal but then when you tell me you sleep five and a half normally like that’s your life like you know sleeping amount that that’s normal for you you’re you’re oh you know not quite doubling it but i can see why you’re like oh my gosh i’m sleeping nine hours and i’m like so what you know like what’s the big deal what’s so funny i thought you were gonna say like 10 or 12 hours oh no it’s so funny because i’ll come out in the morning because gene will get up a little bit earlier than me now which never usually happens he but he’s up earlier at
SPEAKER 08 :
And then I go back to sleep for another two and a half hours. And I roll out and I say, what is wrong with me? And he just looks at me and laughs and says, finally, I’m glad you’re able to sleep. I’m glad you’re doing this because, you know, you’re listening to your body. Obviously, your body needs the rest. And I’m so proud of you for listening to your body.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, in the in the book, Finding Hope in Crisis on the devotion titled Rest, you always give us a time to ponder and pray. And you say, ponder, rest for a few minutes, close your eyes and enjoy guilt free. And I have this new app that kind of. It gives me reminders throughout the day, and it actually tells me to slow down, take a little break for stretching, a little break for breathing because that’s not my normal routine. I have to be reminded to slow down. I don’t need to be reminded to take a nap, though. And then in the prayer section, it says, Father, provide the opportunity and ability for me to sleep deeply. So apparently your prayer is coming to fruition.
SPEAKER 08 :
Finally. Yeah. Like I, I, I am just amazed at how he’s doing that. I feel like sleep is such a gift for me at this point in my life and, and I’m taking it as such and I’m going to enjoy it. So yeah, for all of the listeners out there, if they’re like, Oh no, this is just so stressful. Like, you know, I’m tired. I’m just exhausted from all the stuff I have to do and my to-do list that never ends. I just want to encourage everybody to just take that deep breath and exhale. And seriously, look at the to-do list and say, is there something that I can let go of or simplify this season? And boy, it’s just freeing when we’re able to do that.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know, it’s funny you say sleep is a gift because I’ll give myself like a reward, you know, when I had to get up at 2.45 in the morning, that’d be my reward in the afternoon would be the gift would be the nap. And I still do that where I’ll be like, okay, I have to get through these amount of things. And then I think, well, what time will the kids, you know, be home from school? And that’s It varies depending on practices, this, that, and the other. And my reward is if I take a nap at 2, then I won’t get woken up by them coming home, so I can take a little nap before they come home. But it’s funny because one of my kids – likes to come into my room and get onto her. We have like a giant California king because my husband’s like 6’6″, and we need lots of room for the five pets in the bed. Anyway, she loves to come in with her snack or whatever after school. She might have some Taco Bell or Chick-fil-A. She’ll get on his side of the bed, put all of her snacks there, and then lie down. And she loves to take a nap after school if she doesn’t have practice. And so she’ll just lie down at his side. So sometimes I’ll wait for her to come home, and we get the heated blanket on, and we both lie down. That’s like our gift in the day that we both take a nap at the same time in my room.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, that’s beautiful. And with the heated blanket, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
We fight over it. We fight over the heated blanket. She tries to take more of it. It’s funny. I’m like, I got you your own. Go get yours and plug it in. Oh, that’s funny. Okay, so go ahead and read at the end of that devotion. You talk about Charles Swindoll and what he says about rest.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yeah, he wrote in place of our exhaustion and physical fatigue, he will give us rest. All he asks is that we come to him, that we spend a while thinking about him, meditating on him, talking to him, listening in silence, occupying ourselves with him totally and thoroughly lost in the hiding place of his presence. I love that.
SPEAKER 06 :
I do, too. And I think I think this was a good choice, you know, for this time of year as we get caught up. I mean, you know, as we head through the holidays, there’s just so much going on and we can’t forget the reason for the season. And I think this year, you know, with my kids being older, I know you’ve got younger grandkids. So there’s all kinds of the Play-Doh and the puzzles and the games and the learning games. And I just think about all the money we spent on games, and I didn’t want to spend all that money on those things, but that’s what your kids want at that age. But now we’re taking a big trip, and we’re going to go on a cruise as a family, and we’ll be gone for two weeks, and that’s kind of our Christmas present. But I thought, well, they still like a tree, so I have a surprise Christmas tree that’s made out of tinsel that you – I can literally put in a box that’s not much bigger than an on like a big envelope, like a manila envelope. But the box is like maybe three inches high and the size of maybe two pieces of paper, you know, out of a notebook. So it’s pretty compact. So they’re not going to know that I’m going to put that up in the room, but I would put that up and then. I’m going to give them snorkel gear like under the tree per se as their Christmas present and maybe one other small thing. So I’ll still have that. But I’m really relieved that I’d much rather for me spend the money for Christmas on a really great memory-making trip. I like experiences more than things. And so even though I know they like to get the things, all the grandparents’ money that they give them, I’m just saying here – take that on your trip and you can buy things. But I’m not as into the, you know, wrapping and getting a bazillion things. Especially, I don’t know about you, Grace, but I don’t even know what they want anymore. You know, it’s so hard to shop for them when they get to a certain age.
SPEAKER 08 :
And that’s right. I think, even when I think about my grandkids, I think, what is it that they really need? Because it seems, you know, whatever they really need, we’re able to provide. The family’s able to provide for that. So… I don’t know. I was also thinking one thing that we’ve done in the past with my husband’s extended family, we used to do a name draw between all the adults. And then years ago, we stopped that and said, you know what, there’s nothing that we really need. We don’t need to be doing this. So we pulled money and donated it to a to a nonprofit organization, like to a charity and said, this is. For you to use wherever it’s needed. And so rather than spending money on gifts we really didn’t need, we put it to something that would really benefit somebody else.
SPEAKER 06 :
I like that, too, because there’s a lot of ways now to, like, divide costs and do cool things. Like, I’m taking a trip with friends, and you can have, like, a pool thing where you can tell them each, you know, how much to put in, and then, you know, you cover the cost of the trip. But you can also find the cool apps where you can just have people contribute for Christmas to that particular nonprofit, you know, give the amount they’re comfortable with, and it’s an easy way for people to donate, like via Venmo or Cash App or some of the other ways that people They do it these days. So I think just during this time of year to not get too caught up in the busyness and to rest when you need to. And I like also in this finding hope in crisis, there’s a devotion that we could focus on more another time. But I just want to mention it’s God’s solution for worry. And I think we worry so much about things that really never come to fruition. And it just reminded me as I was talking with one of my good friends, Jim Stovall, about worry recently. And he’s blind, and he says there are a lot of things he can’t control. And then he said, think about the serenity prayer. And I said, oh, it’s so funny that you say that, because I used to take my brother to AA meetings, and I remember the serenity prayer. So I looked it up, and it’s God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Because If you worry about these things you can’t control and can’t change, it leads to a lot of anxiety. And for AA people, that leads to drinking or whatever their drug of choice is, as they call it. But for many of us, it just leads to unnecessary worry, and I don’t think that’s what the Lord has planned for us or wants for us.
SPEAKER 07 :
It just seems like that’s the opposite of…
SPEAKER 06 :
Exactly. All right, GraceFox.com, GraceFox.com, and the book that we’re talking about today, Finding Hope in Crisis, Devotions for Calm and Chaos. Thank you, friend. You bet.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
