Millard Fuller's Million-Dollar Repentance

In 1965, Millard Fuller was a thirty-year-old millionaire in Montgomery, Alabama, with a law practice, a Lincoln Continental, and a marriage falling apart. His wife Linda told him she was leaving. The money, the country club memberships, the Sunday morning appearances at church — none of it had made them whole.

Fuller drove to New York City to find her, and in a cramped hotel room, they wept and prayed and made a decision that baffled everyone who knew them. They would give away everything. Every dollar. Every asset. Every comfortable thing they had accumulated.

They returned south and eventually found their way to Koinonia Farm, a small interracial Christian community near Americus, Georgia, founded by Clarence Jordan. There, Fuller started building simple, decent houses alongside the people who would live in them. No profit. No interest. Just families swinging hammers together in the red Georgia clay.

That impulse became Habitat for Humanity, which has since built or repaired more than 800,000 homes worldwide.