The Rockport and Bluffton First United Methodist churches participated on a mission trip from July 6 through 13, to New Bern, North Carolina.  

Dan Groman provided the follow account of the mission trip for the Icon:

This area was devastated by Hurricane Florence in September, 2018, followed by Hurricane Michael less than a month later.  There was over $100 million in damage to homes and businesses in New Bern from these storms as the Neuse River rose from the storm surge.    

While most people think that the damage done in last fall’s hurricanes has all been repaired, it is clear that many years of work is needed to get people through this devastation.  

Driving through New Bern, there were sections that 50% of the homes remain unoccupied today.  A young family that we met lives 20 miles south of New Bern, and power has not been restored to their area because most of the homes were washed away.   

Nine of us from the Bluffton area met up with another 6 volunteers in New Bern, and along with the Samaritan’s Purse folks, we were split into three teams, working on multiple homes through the week.  

Most of my time was spent on two homes that had not been cleaned out of personal belongings since last fall’s storm.  We removed belongings from these homes, throwing most of this away and salvaging what we could.  

Between these two houses, we filled at least 13 large roll off boxes with debris and old building materials.  The one house was not salvageable and will be replaced with a new single-wide mobile home, while the other had severe rot in the floors, floor joists and interior walls. 

We removed all of this, and prepared for installation of new floor joists and interior walls.  This home will require all new electrical, plumbing, insulation, drywall, kitchen, bathrooms, etc., as well as a new roof.  

One of our teams painted walls, installed cabinets and flooring, as that home was nearing completion.  We participated in the final touches on several houses, wrapping up construction so these homes could be turned over to the homeowner.  We took part in the dedication/turnover of a home to one homeowner. This made all of our efforts worthwhile.   

We made a small dent in a big problem, and one by one, the people of New Bern are getting back to what they might consider “normal.”  Our thoughts and prayers remain with these homeowners, and those that are still patiently waiting for their home to be repaired.   

This is an overwhelming task, especially for the elderly or disabled homeowners that we worked with.  We, too, were initially overwhelmed with the task before us, but we worked through it room by room.  We also know that more teams are continuing to work on these homes after we left. 

We worked through the Samaritan’s Purse organization, which was extremely well organized.  This group focuses on not only sharing volunteer efforts to rebuild peoples’ homes, but they focus on sharing the love of Jesus Christ to those in the community.   We had the opportunity to do this in countless ways.