The last week of March brought the start of our Harambee CItybuilders semester during Chicago Public School's spring break. We had two crews hard at work- one on our tuckpointing site, and one continuing our partnership with Neighborspace and completing another phase of the renovation of Children's Garden of Hope. We lucked out with some manageble weather- and were so excted to get back to work.

Our Harambee Citybuilders had several new apprentices to train and all of our youth got back into the groove of setting scaffolding, grinding out old mortar, and tuckpointing for a homeowner on the 1000 block of Drake Avenue. We were delighted to have three long-time Harambee apprentices return to us: James, Mariah and Josiah all who are now available for after school programming. It was an incredible blessing to have their experience as we added several new apprentices for this spring semester.

Our garden crew did a great job with some minor demolition, spreading mulch, building raised beds, and then filling them with wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil. We enjoyed special guest helpers from the neighborhood from time to time, and also had the privileged of having InterVarsity students from UCLA join us on Tuesday afternoon.

Being Holy Week, Anthony led us in devotions considering Jesus as the curse breaker. Our youth can give ample evidence of the presence of the curse of sickness, death and toil- as simple as the difficulty in our daily work to the tragedy and trauma they have known. Easter was exactly the reminder we all needed- that our work to restore houses, or gardens, our neighborhoods or our relationships is not in vain as Jesus brings restoration into all those places that will have eternal impact. Continue to pray for our apprentices as they work hard and learn to hope for lasting restoration.