Recently, Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wilmington, NC and continued to move further inland from there. The impact from this hurricane was great. We experienced days of endless rain, power outages, and plenty of flooding. After the hurricane finally dissipated, we were left to clean up the damage. It took a while to clear some roads so that people could safely travel on them. Gospel Tabernacle in Dunn started gathering supplies and asking for donations of food and water so that they could help those who really needed it. Once Dunn PAL heard about it, they were all in.
Captain Rodney Rowland and Miss Stephanie Coxum gathered plenty of volunteers, both young and old, from the community to help. We helped make plates of food, load them into trucks to be taken to places without power like Roseville, and we even got to help in the delivery of the food and water. I can honestly say that my favorite part of the whole time we were working with the church was the last day we volunteered before school started back. We loaded up and traveled to Wallace to drop off some supplies and help clean up houses.
We split up so the boys went to one house and the girls went to another. The house that the girls went to was one that had flooded tremendously. The rooms that had carpet flooring were completely soaked and the wood flooring was starting to swell and pop up, making it slippery and dangerous for anyone to walk on. Our job there was to help move the trash out so that they could start taking the floors up. Luckily, the family was able to keep some of their furniture that survived the flooding but they had to throw away a lot of other things. Many of their family pictures and portraits had gotten damaged as well as some books that had been passed down through their family. It was heartbreaking to watch them lose something so valuable to them, something that they could never get back.
That day, we gave those families hope that things will get better and that everything will work itself out, all they need is a little patience. It was in the middle of the clean up that I realized how fortunate I was that it did not do that much damage to my home and many others around me.
