Rose Hill ? Gracia Burnham has said she wants to call Rose Hill home, so people in this small city hope to build her one by Christmas.

“We’re not trying to build her a mansion she doesn’t want one,” said Steve McRae, who is organizing the effort. “We just want to give her a home where she can feel comfortable raising her kids.”

McRae and others are in the early stages of recruiting workers, contractors or just good Samaritans to volunteer to help build Burnham and her three children a comfortable, “Rose Hill-type” home.

Burnham and her husband, Martin, were missionaries in the Philippines and were kidnapped and held hostage in the jungle there for more than a year. Last month, she was rescued and her husband was killed in a shoot-out between Filipino troops and the rebel kidnappers.

Gracia is in Florida with her three children Jeff, 15, Mindy, 12, and Zach, 11. But they return next week.

Since the kidnappings, the children have lived with their grandparents, Paul and Oreta Burnham, at their Rose Hill home, where Gracia also now lives.

Gracia Burnham has expressed reluctance to displace the children again and wants to keep them near their new friends.

McRae said he didn’t know the Burnham family, but followed Martin and Gracia’s ordeal in the news.

When Gracia returned home without her husband, McRae felt driven to do something to help. When he heard she wanted to stay in Rose Hill, he realized building her a home would be a perfect way to let her know how welcome she was there.

He wrote her a letter, explaining what he wanted to do. She accepted.

Mark McKenna, a general contractor from Rose Hill, is already on board, he said.

“Like so many others, I prayed for Martin and Gracia while they were gone and felt so helpless that there wasn’t more I could do,” McKenna said.