Want something to think about that will warm the cockles of your heart and help you get through these frigid days?

How about helping a local family move into a home of its own?

You can do that by making plans to attend the Bangor Board of REALTORS eighth annual Valentine’s Dance to benefit the Greater Bangor Chapter of Habitat for Humanity International.

This year’s benefit is from 8 p.m. to midnight Saturday, Feb. 7, at Jeff’s Catering in Brewer.

Tickets are $15 each or $150 for a table of 10 and you will certainly enjoy dancing to live music by Brian Catell and Brian Nadeau.

All funds raised at these events are eligible for matching grants from the Maine Association of REALTORS Affordable Housing Foundation.

HHI is a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian housing organization that welcomes all volunteers to help build affordable houses in partnership with those who lack adequate shelter, according to its Web site.

Certainly, during weather like this, we can easily understand the importance of this international organization in our local area.

Since 1995, the Bangor Board of REALTORS has donated more than $60,000 to the Greater Bangor HHI chapter to help it build nine homes in Bangor and Brewer.

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity International has built more than 50,000 homes with families in the United States and another 100,000 or more homes in 92 countries throughout the world.

HHI is now building one house every 26 minutes and, by 2005, expects to be sheltering 1 million people.

As GBHH volunteer Steve Earl has explained in the past, HHI builds homes for and with “partnership families” who are “people who have an ability to repay and who are willing to partner with us in providing 300-plus hours of sweat equity” in building their homes.

The money repaid by owners is recycled into another home with no profit made by Habitat for Humanity.

If you have questions about Habitat for Humanity, call its answering service at 942-8977 and ask to have a GBHH volunteer call you.

In the meantime, think about keeping warm on the dance floor and, at the same time, helping GBHH build another house in our area.

Tickets are available through your local REALTORS.

The Nokomis Jazz Ensemble and Jazz Combo will be performing in April in the Hawaiian Heritage Music Festival.

The student musicians are also scheduled to perform a tribute concert aboard the USS Missouri in Pearl Harbor.

But in order for them to participate in this educational experience, they must raise the money to get there, and this is one way you can help.

The Debbie Myers Country Music Show is from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport.

Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for students. Proceeds will benefit the students’ trip to Hawaii.

Tickets can be purchased at the door, and concessions will be available during the show.

For more information about how you can help these musicians raise the funds for this marvelous trip, call Joan Leavitt at 368-5467, Steve Hoekstra at 368-5570 or Stacey Halford at 938-2350.

Here’s a reminder from Maureen Flagg and Tammy Gordon that a 43-hour volunteer hot line training program for Spruce Run Association in Bangor, the domestic violence project serving Penobscot County, begins on Monday, Jan. 26.

No experience is required for this training program, which prepares you to support people affected by domestic violence.

The course includes presentations on the dynamics of domestic violence and crisis intervention skill development.

If you are interested in this training, through which you can obtain work-study and continuing education units, call either Flagg or Gordon at 945-5102

Writing on behalf of the family of Spc. Luke Hussey of Milo, his aunt, Heather Berg, thanks “all the family and greeters” who welcomed him home after eight months in Iraq.

“He never expected such a wonderful welcoming. The gifts were very touching and appreciated. Thank you,” she wrote.

The family extends special thanks to “Bill Knight and the group of greeters” at Bangor International Airport “for the heartwarming welcoming” Hussey received.

Hussey, who enjoyed a late Christmas with his family earlier this month, is a petroleum supply specialist with the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Division, which conducted several important and significant raids while he was in Iraq.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.