hands using hammers, some young and strong, some older and weaker, some remembered even now as they have gone to the other side, but whose eyes still twinkle, whose lips still smile at the thought of people working and giving and improving and building.

 

I suppose if you’d lay all those nails end to end they’d really only stretch out a couple hundred miles.  Or maybe they’d reach a lot further.  Maybe they’d go far into eternity, far into the heart of the One who created all things good and who used three nails 2000 years ago at a rugged place called Calvary to make all things new. 

 

Thank you, dearest Hosanna heart and hand, for helping to make the last 18 years, and the first 18 years of Hosanna Industries’ life possible.

 

Love to you, with       gratitude,

DDE

 

 

 

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about nails, lately.  Again.  Seems like I’ve been thinking about them for quite a few years since Hosanna Industries was born on Palm Sunday, back in the year 1990.

 

I really love what nails do.  Such a simple device— no moving parts, yet when driven properly and in the right place a nail can hold two or more items together awfully well. 

 

I’ve seen a lot of nails driven through the years.    I drove a few of them, but most of them were driven by thousands and thousands of people just like you who showed up to help with a hand, a heart, and a hammer.

 

I did a little figuring about it as I thought about those nails along the way.  The results surprised me, and they might surprise you too.  More than ten million nails of many different sorts have been driven by Hosanna’s hands through the years, building and

repairing thousands of homes where poorer people live.  All those nails would fill to capacity two big triaxle trucks if you could collect all of them. But you can’t and neither can I.

 

That’s because they’re all out there in so many different places of the world doing what they were made to do.  Holding things together.  Everyone of them had to be driven by somebody to turn a load of lumber into a house and a house into a home.

 

Once there was just one.  A first nail driven, but soon it was followed by others and now so many nails later it’s hard to imagine their full effect.  So many homes protecting little children from the cold.  So many homes sheltering the aged, the hurt, the misunderstood, the confused, the searching, the believing, the voices calling out, “hosanna”.  So

many loving hearts and

Hosanna Industries, Inc.

Hammers, Hearts, and Hands

March 2008

Volume 18, Number 1

Board of Directors

Todd Rossman,

President

 

Michelle Bailey,

Vice President

 

Stacie Lowery,

Secretary/Treasurer

 

Bruce Edwards

 

Donn Ed,

Ex-officio

 

Mission Workers

 

Clem Anderson

Andy Brown

Adam Ed

Amy Ed

Amy Lee Firek

Dave Firek

John Hensley

Becky Hetzer

Brian Hetzer

Lauren Myers

Jen Schriefer

Julie Wettach

 

Donn Ed

Executive Director

 

 

Hosanna Industries, Inc.

109 Rinard Lane

Rochester, PA 15074

Phone:  724-770-0262

Fax:  724-770-0266

E-Mail:  mail@hosannaindustries.org

Website: 

www.hosannaindustries.org

 

United Way Codes:

Allegheny County:  3750

Butler County:  62211