We have 15 people from Black Rock Church: 6 young people, 2 parents, 7 others (the latter including Lois and me).

The above church will be our headquarters for the next week. The following is the map where this church is located.

The following clip was just before we left: early on the Sunday morning, June 18, 2023.

As indicated in the above video, we learned ON THE WAY to the airport that our flight is delayed. This tests our commitment and prayer to trust God in everything! Stayed tuned!

We landed Sunday about three hours late. Lunch was one of those delightful breakfast bars. We ordered supper using Panera’s group order app (never again!) and finally, with the assistance of two young people on the trip (see next photo) we ate “lupper” and met in the room shown above for our initial briefing (above).

I’m writing early Monday morning. We met the local people last night, including those from other churches here to help. We’ll meet the local contractors (people we’ll be assisting with wallboard and floor today) on the sites later this morning. We also heard the stories of people in whose homes we’ll be working, including one who lost their home a few hours after closing on its purchase and a few hours before the insurance was effective.

I’m writing this on the Sunday, June 25 (the day after we returned). I found that the network really was not all that good for keeping this site up to date, and also, I was asked to do two devotionals (one on short notice, so what little free time we had was taken up with preparation for those).

We learned during the training classes that we were not deployed to the beach area since there really is no reparations going on there; there is just too much damage. See next panel with a few photos showing what is meant by this.

We were instead deployed in the suburbs where people who either could not afford the insurance or found out that the hurricane coverage they had did not include damage from storm surges (which is mostly what were where there to help repair). As one drives along the street where we worked, one could not really tell from the outside, but in the home we visited other than our project house (which had been gutted up to the lower four feet height of the walls), we saw mold growing around the lower part of the walls 1-2 feet high.

The trip was ultimately organized by Reach Global, which is the missions organization of the Evangelical Free Church of America, but more particularly the “Crisis Response” unit of that world wide organization. The Crisis Response unit (blue shirts in the above photo) consists of people (typically retirees and young people taking a gap year between high school and college) who raise financial support so they can live (typically in trailers) at crisis centers any where from 2-5 years. When the crisis is finally over in one location, they raise funds so they can move to the next one. The blue shirt couple that helped us at our site (Steve and Susan, 4th from left back row, and third from left front row) had been for years in a site in Texas and are now in the process of raising financial support so they can settle at Fort Myers for the next few years, assisting volunteers like our group (the green shirts) who come down typically for a week to help. The blue shirts said that they are not usually the first people on location after a crisis, but they are often the last to leave. We all left with a great deal of admiration for these people working in the name of Jesus to care for others in need.

The Crisis Response team were pretty well organized. They had established a priority as to who they helped which was pretty simple: they would help any members of their church who was in need, but after that (and this is where they are now), they helped those they judged to be most needed regardless of whether or not those in need attended church or not, while praying that their assistance would show the love of Christ such that those receiving help would want to come to church to find out why people were motivated to help them. Back at the church, the blue shirts had divided our team into groups for keeping the home base — the local church pictured above — clean (see next photo).

In addition, the blue shirts gave us a brief course in how to assist those in crisis. It was actually quite professionally prepared and delivered.

The week before we arrived, Jim and Marvin’s home was just studs; no wall board, including in the bathroom. Apparently, when someone on the team need to use the toilet, the entire team had to clear out for privacy. Awkward!!!

The walls were all up by the time we got there (though none of the seams were done), but there was still no door on the bathroom. However, the neighbors across the street, Mark and Jen offered us the use of their bathroom, but also the use of their dining room for consuming our lunches each day. See picture below and clip below that. Mark and Jen are still living in their garage and you can still see where the waterline was in their home. We bought them a Home Depot card for hosting our lunches each day. They were very moved by the gesture.

After lunch it was back to work at Jim and Marvin’s home. Lois was able to all the jobs related to wall boarding. She was most impressive!

Despite all the hammering Lois did (above), she never hit her thumb! She even muscled half sheets of wallboard into place (below)!

And lest you think I (Bill) was only there to take pictures of Lois doing all the work, I just want to let you know that I did some work as well:

At the end of the day, Keith (one of the fathers on the trip) along with Stefan helped Gracie and AndraLyn get cool after a long hard day at their project site (below)!

Finally, on Thursday night, the last night there, we had an awards ceremony, with blue shirt Eric as MC, giving away awards to the all female work crew at this site. Eric was probably the most experienced construction person there and he looked the part, but he was very sweet and appreciative of all the women at his site for the week. See next four clips.

After the light-hearted ceremonies, we heard from one home owner who wanted to say thanks (see clip below; I promised this woman that her comments would not be posted on social media outlets; please respect this):

The following day, Friday, June 23, we worked just two hours since our flight departed at 3PM. Looking back, it was clear that God blessed this trip: our group was unified, despite generational, gender, racial and socio-economic differences. Yet through this diversity, we are confident that the love of Christ shown through our being there. SO THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR PARTICIPATION ON THIS JOURNEY! Should you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know. Thank you again!