I need your help!

Picture it: miles of road, stretching out over the badlands, the mountains, the forests--which often coincide with the mountains--the lakes, the deserts, two different oceans, all things I've seen from twenty thousand feet in an airliner that now I'll be seeing from the ground up. It's a crazy idea, cycling across the United States, but I've been wanting to do it for years, even before I heard about Bike & Build when Cari Zylstra came back to Stetson to visit, completely ripped, after her summer of cycling and serving with Bike & Build.

Yet I cannot do it without your help. In contrast to many cycling-across-the-country programs, many of which put its participants up in nice hotels and feed them good meals, Bike & Build will see me sleeping on church floors, eating PB & J, and spending my days off on Habitat for Humanity build sites with new homeowners, pouring sweat equity into homes they have worked so hard for.

I'm excited about Bike & Build because it is a chance to take all the hardships of cycling across the country and use it to better people's lives. All of the proceeds that I raise for Bike & Build, after covering the basic costs of the trip, go entirely to affordable housing groups like Habitat for Humanity; and Bike & Build's extremely efficient, three-person staff make sure that there are as few overhead costs as possible, which has enabled riders like me to donate over 2.3 million dollars over seven summers.

For my part, I will be raising $4,000, cycling across the country with a team of around twenty, and sharing about the need for affordable housing--eliminating poverty-level, ramshackle-type housing as well as eliminating homelessness by providing building materials at wholesale prices to hardworking families who put days and days of "sweat equity" into their own homes--over potlucks with local churches, community centers, and more. Yet, to take it a step further, Bike & Build not only serves these groups, but also seeks to create a lifelong sense of service in its participants, which I am incredibly excited about, having sought to promote this same sense of service in my three years of campus ministry at the Wesley House in college.

Yet, as I said, I cannot do this without your help. Money is tight for everyone, but if everyone were able to give just $5, I would be very, very well along my way to my goal of $4,000. Yet I cannot say enough how vitally I need, even more than money, your prayers and support. This is a crazy time of life, but such an opportunity, and I want to be a good steward in as many different dimensions as possible! I want to bike, build, write, lift people up, and so much else. If you have hours to volunteer, please volunteer, if you have friends who like stories, share with them a bit of this crazy story as it goes on, if you have prayers, please lift us up, and the list goes on.

However, if you would like to support this cause financially,
1. Please visit this website: http://www.bikeandbuild.org/cms/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,118/

OR

Visit www.bikeandbuild.org and select "Donate" from the left-hand side of the page (this will lead you to the same page as the link above)

2. Select my name from the list of riders, which reads: "Darragh, Adam (SUS)" [I am taking the Southern US route, hence "SUS")

3. Donate!

Thank you for your support, in any way you can give it. Once again, no adventure is possible without the love and support of family and friends, and no part of the world can be made better without goodhearted people who support in whatever ways they can.