"Truly, today is a special day," said Miguel Rubiera, Habitat for Humanity of Durham's executive director. "I think the most unique thing today is that through Habitat the three, perhaps most important faiths in the world, are getting together and putting aside their minor differences, so to speak, to do something that every single faith believes in, to do something for those less fortunate."

More than 50 people lined the outer edge of a concrete house foundation at 1009 Carroll St. just after 1 p.m. on the chilly Sunday afternoon. Standing where walls would soon be erected, volunteers, neighbors and religious leaders listened to Muslim, Christian and Jewish blessings before they began to build Habitat's first "interfaith" home in Durham.

The "interfaith build" is intended to highlight the different religions' common mission to help those in need as they lift, saw and hammer to raise a home for refugees from Vietnam: Dui Rahlan, Bop Siu, and their eight children ages 5 to 22.

And when the two-story, five bedroom house is finished, the largest built by Habitat in Durham to date, it will stand as a symbol of "peace and recognition," said Rebecca Hix, the project's house leader.

The gathering also celebrated the spirit of World Habitat Day. Traditionally held on the first Monday in October, the United Nations event is intended to emphasize that adequate shelter is a basic human right, and call attention to housing needs locally and across the world.

"Habitat, this is just the vehicle that allows the Muslim congregations, the Jewish synagogues, and the Christian congregations to get together to build a home for a family, which is really most deserving," Rubiera told the crowd Sunday. "A family that has spent all their lives being persecuted, and a family that finally got to the promised land of the United States, and a family for the first time is going to have a home that they can call their own."

Dui Rahlan left his family and the home he built with his own hands in 2004, fleeing Vietnam's communist regime. Before coming to the U.S. in 2005, Rahlan hid among leaves in the jungles of Southeast Asia and swam across a mile-long river to reach a United Nations refugee camp in Cambodia, his children said in an interview Monday.

Rahlan was reunited with his family in July 2006 after they flew into the RDU Airport on a midnight flight. A three bedroom, two-bath rental home awaited the family in Old West Durham.

At first, life here was boring, said Chau Siu, an 18-year-old senior at Riverside High School who recently started working at Chic-fil-A. Their language and other differences created barriers from the rest of the community. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill adopted the family, said Steve Harper, a Durham resident who sits on the church's refugee resettlement committee. Tutors helped the children learn English. Food was stacked on their kitchen table.

"Binkley's church people went like this," Harper said, spreading his arms to emulate a giant embrace.

Sam Siu, a 13-year-old girl with a giddy smile, said she is looking forward to her new neighborhood, and the nice neighbors, one of which she had already met.

Since 1985, Habitat has partnered with 225 families and worked with various agencies to revitalize neighborhoods across the city. The Rahlan-Siu home will be among the nearly 40 Habitat homes built in the southwest-central Durham area in partnership with the City of Durham, Duke University, and local nonprofits Self-Help and the Durham Community Land Trustees, Rubiera said.

In general, Habitat families have sponsors that provide financial backing and volunteers to build the home, said Jeanette Stoltzfus, a spokeswoman for the agency. With the interfaith build, representatives of various faiths have committed to filling the sponsorship role, Stoltzfus said. They plan to worship, build, and have lunch together on weekends until the house is completed in January, Stoltzfus said.

Among the final remarks in the blessing Sunday, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Priest Robert Kaynor said that while there are beliefs that the religions share and disagree on, the opportunity to debate can deepen each person's faith.

"By being challenged one to another, we find a truer, deeper meaning than the one we can conceive only to ourselves," Kaynor said. "And so it is important that we work together, that we work in service, that we find the opportunity to discuss, to dispute, but ... it is most important that at the end of the day we come together and we say we salam, we say shalom, we say the peace of the Lord be always with you."