Coming Together to Help The Keys and Immokalee After Hurricane Irma

Being that we are now preparing to help those affected by Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, I wanted to re-post how we came together to Help The Keys and Immokalee After Hurricane Irma. Just wanted to remind you that anything you can do to help matters…Consider finding a way to help those affected by the Hurricane Florence in any way you can.

This hurricane season was no joke. Between Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria, there is much devastation. I remember preparing for Hurricane Irma thinking it would hit us as a category 4 and not knowing if we should evacuate or stay. Although we personally experienced damage to our home and loss of power for almost 4 days, our house was still standing and we were able to live in it.
Thankfully, my county was spared the worst parts of the storm but other weren’t so lucky.

While we can’t control the outcome of a Hurricane, we can control what we do afterwards to rebuild and help others. That is why some of us came came together to help The Keys and Immokalee.

We started off with the Keys…

The plan was to fill a 26′ moving truck with donations and drop them off at a church in Key Largo that would handle distributing the items. We would have loved to take it directly to the people but vehicles were not allowed into the lower keys because of the level of destruction. We initially feared we wouldn’t be able to fill the truck but it was so full that not only were we able to drop off donations to that church, we were also able to drop off some of the items to the Islamorada Fish Company, who also happened to be helping the community. God is good!

I loved having our kids involved and they loved it too. I was so proud of how hard they worked and how little they complained, LOL. Being there, seeing the need and knowing that we were doing what we could to help brought us joy.

Then we wanted to help Immokalee

After the Keys, we all felt that we wanted (and needed) to do more, so we did. We partnered up with a church in Immokalee. Instead of just dropping off items, we created care packages and local people drove up to get items. Actually, people even came on bikes and even walked over to get these packages.

We had the privilege of blessing over 100 families in Immokalee with food, personal care items, cleaning supplies and more.

Before going out into the community, we also had the honor of sitting in on a church service, at Immokalee Seminole Baptist Church, where the pastor said that we are called to be the light in the darkness, the kind of light that is a reflection of Jesus…I hope that is what we did there.

I share this only because as this hurricane season comes to an end, I want us to remember that there are people who are unfortunately still dealing with the effects and devastation of Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria. Consider doing what you can to help because there are still a ton of people who need it.