"Move! That! Bus!"

With those three words, screamed by volunteers and supporters outside the Weeks' family residence in Aldergrove, a mom and her children watched as their "new" home materialized before their eyes.

After the yellow school bus blocking the view of Karen Weeks and her children Paige, Jesse, Alexandria, and Josh rolled away, the family was visibly moved by what the team from Aldergrove Seventh-Day Adventist Church - through its Acts of Kindness ministry - had done to their home.

Prior to demolition one morning, the volunteers gathered outside the home to ask for help from a carpenter's son born more than two millenia ago.

"What a privilege it is to come here today, Lord, and serve..." said project coordinator Lorne Brownmiller.

"Lord that's what we're here for. We want to do an exemplary job for Karen and her family...

"Give us a spirit, Lord, of cooperation. Give us a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood here today. Lord, give us safety on this project. Give us wisdom..."

Each year, the Aldergrove church picks a family that owns its home but might not be able to - for financial or physical reasons - be able to do maintenance or improvements.

Leading up to this month's Extreme Home Repair, taken on by several dozens of volunteers over a period of 10 days, the problems that made the Weeks' home difficult to live in were numerous. They included electrical, a circa 1960 furnace, lack of insulation in the back bedroom, and poor attic ventilation coupled with old windows, allowing mold to grow in most of the rooms.

When asked about the family's health, Brownmiller learned that both Alexandria and Jesse suffer with asthma that is progressively getting worse.

As Karen and her family toured their renovated home during the reveal Monday, she repeated the same three words: "Oh my gosh!"

When the Langley Advance caught up to Karen, she was walking on air.

"I had no expectations," she said. "They said they were going to replace windows and get rid of mold for my daughter and I was like, 'Fine! Perfect!'"

Taking a quick pause, Karen continued: "This is a whole different house. This is un-be-lieve-able! I can't even express it. My kids will be healthy; it's a beautiful house; it just makes you feel great."

Through all her emotion, Karen kept her sense of humour: "I didn't know that so many people liked me," she told the assembled crowd prior to the house reveal, "and I'm sorry for all the bad things I've ever done."

Volunteers diligently toiled away, doing last-second alterations, and some quick gardening and cleanup before the family's arrival Monday. Amid the frenzy, Brownmiller took a moment to reflect on the process and end result.

Each year, he said, AOK's Extreme Home Repair receives nominations from friends and neighbours of people in need. The Weeks family was nominated by two well-wishers.

"There's a lot of criteria that's involved in being nominated or being received as a recipient," Brownmiller said. "In going through a number of the criteria, the Weeks family met all of them, and due to a lot of the health struggles that the children were having, and the condition of the home - safety, mold, a very tired old furnace, windows that needed to be replaced - it was a project that we felt that we had the manpower, the sponsors, the support, that we could manage this year."

Brownmiller said he receives the most satisfaction from seeing "lives changed." His voice tight with emotion, he added, "It's wonderful to see the family come home, and it's wonderful to see their faces as they embark on a new life, a new start."

The recipients of the home repair aren't the only ones whose lives are enriched, Brownmiller said: "This is my seventh year, and to be involved in it and see the day-to-day stories, and the day-to-day caring, supportive, nurturing family that we come to know, here, there's nothing in my life that compares to it."

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