A few years later, Tibbels startled Susan by insisting they move to the ghetto. Along with his friend Mark Gornik, he had been reading John M. Perkins, an evangelist and civil rights worker in Mississippi who urged the privileged to live with the poor. Christ came down from heaven; Jesus was no commuter! Susan was once the Ivory soap girl of the Christian youth set, destined for suburban contentment. She understood the theory — God dwells among the poor — but she had two young daughters, a disabled husband and a terror of rats. She followed under howling protest, to a neighborhood called Sandtown. Baltimore’s crack-addled streets in the mid-1980s were as mean as any, and there was hardly another white person for miles. Those who did not assume Tibbels was a cop thought he was buying drugs. When a robber held a knife to his throat, he invited him to church.
Not long after that, the Tibbels called Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, and asked what they could do to start a Habitat affiliate in their section of Baltimore. Fuller told them if they could "scrape together a dollar" they could start one, which they did--Sandtown Habitat for Humanity.
The Tibbels, along with Gornik, went on to found New Song Church and ministries, a preschool, and a charter school. Other New Song efforts included afterschool and college-counseling programs, a health clinic and community gardens.
Sandtown has built nearly 300 homes, and is about two-thirds complete in its ambition to transform 15 square blocks of Sandtown. Allan Tibbels is a legend in Habitat for Humanity, and it is an honor to have been acquainted with him.
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