Years after Hurricane Ian, Wintergarden Presbyterian Church celebrates a job well done as a PDA host site
Good relationships with partners helped the southwest Florida church and its surrounding community to rebound from major storm
LOUISVILLE — Three years after Port Charlotte, Florida was hit by Hurricane Ian, a church that hosted as many as two to three teams of volunteer groups per month is closing the door on that chapter but leaving room for an epilogue.
The Rev. Devon Andrews, pastor of Wintergarden Presbyterian Church, recently led a poignant service honoring the church’s tenure as a Presbyterian Disaster Assistance volunteer host site.
Thanks to the small-but-mighty 33-member congregation, volunteers from all over the country received a place to stay while helping residents recover from 2022’s Hurricane Ian and subsequent storms that have moved through the gulf coast of southwest Florida.
The church opened its property despite having extensive hurricane damage to its sanctuary and property and provided a welcoming presence during a harrowing time for the community in the wake of one of the worst hurricanes to hit the U.S.
The service, with a liturgy of thanksgiving from PDA, was a time to reflect on the host site years and to thank those whose love and partnership helped Wintergarden to provide for the community while it persevered through its own challenges.
“Our church is a church of servants,” Andrews explained in an interview with the Presbyterian News Service. “We serve our community in the best way we know how to.”
After the devastation wrought by Ian, “we started hearing all the stories of all the damage, and the question was, how can we (as a church) help and what do we do?” Andrews said.
Along with becoming a host site, Wintergarden continued serving hundreds of neighbors through its food pantry program and obtained critical funds, including a $100,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Sarasota County to support the purchase of rebuilding materials to help residents who had sustained significant damage to their homes.
“The majority of what we received (through grants) all went back out into the community,” Andrews said. “So we were able to help homeowners with new doors, with garage doors, with windows, with paying a portion of their roof, helping buy drywall and insulation — all different building materials, really — to make their homes safe, sanitary and secure.”
Jim Reitz, a member of the PDA National Response Team (NRT), praises the congregation for its dedication. Despite being small, “it is an amazing group of people that are doing a lot of good stuff,” he said. It‘s helpful to have a pastor who cheers you on, “saying, ‘We can do this. Let's go.’”
When Reitz arrived in the community shortly after it was hit by Ian, up to 80% of roofs he saw were covered with blue tarps. But now he’s struck by the many new roofs and repairs he’s seen in the community as well as the restoration of the church.
“You laid the foundation, the footer, if you will, and then teams came in and they started building the brick walls, one layer at a time,” Reitz said during the service, which included a presentation of gifts from PDA.
“I, this morning, am just inspired by hearing your stories, and the stories of the other work partners and your listening to the Spirit calling, and trusting God to be with you,” said Michele Holifield, a fellow NRT member who presented the church with a cross and a certificate of appreciation from PDA.
Andrews credits much of the success of the host site to an array of partners that have included not only PDA, Peace River Presbytery and the Florida Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Network but also the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church and the United Methodist Committee on Relief. Others include SBP (the St. Bernard Project), Mennonite Disaster Services, Church of the Palms in Sarasota, the Gulf Coast partnership, the United Way in Charlotte County and Palma Ceia Presbyterian Church in Tampa, among others.
“All those partnerships are what kept us going and kept us motivated because we couldn't have done anything without the partnerships that we had,” Andrews said.
The church itself was severely damaged by Ian, which lashed Charlotte County in the same storm that also heavily damaged nearby Fort Myers Beach in September 2022.
The church sustained more than $600,000 in damage, including losing portions of the roof, which caused rain to pour into the sanctuary for several hours.
“We had 20 folks staying (overnight) at the church during the hurricane,” Andrews said. The only reason “we didn’t lose more of the church is because they kept our sanctuary doors barricaded with their bodies. … They took shifts of having furniture and their bodies against the sanctuary doors, so it (the hurricane) wouldn’t continue to destroy the rest of the building.”
Afterwards, widespread damage to the community was evident.
“It was like every two to three homes, were impacted, and it’s because the hurricane sat in Charlotte Harbor for, I think, 12 hours,” Andrews said. “Tornadoes devastated our county as well.”
The church responded right away by providing food to 750 families, and held services outdoors for 10 months because the church itself was uninhabitable. Its food pantry and gardens also were damaged.
But by November, Wintergarden had partnered with Missions on Wheels, a Texas-based nonprofit, to begin welcoming work crews. That group’s leader brought two trailers that each had eight bunk beds in them; there also was a shower trailer.
The church improvised in other ways as well.
At one point, “we had the fridge, the freezer and the stove all plugged into the sanctuary, so the teams could prepare some meals while the kitchen wasn't even functioning,” Andrews said. “We ate a lot of pizza during those times and did a lot of grilling out.”
Help from volunteers went beyond the physical labor of drying houses, putting insulation back in and the like.
“They also got to see and talk with folks who came through our food pantry, to hear their stories and be able to pray with them and offer hope,” Andrews said. “I think that's the biggest thing that the mission teams do is they offer hope to folks who are being beat up” emotionally due to the ramifications of the storm.
Reitz said having a host site ready to take volunteers is very important since hotel rooms often are tough to come by.
When people are eager to assist in a community’s recovery, “I would always say the same thing to them: ‘We will go as soon as there's a place for us to stay,’” he said.
Wintergarden says taking part in long-term recovery was part of God’s call for the church.
“Before Ian, we were doing our food pantry and doing it well but also actively searching for a new ministry, so we were open,” said Wendy Rainey, an AmeriCorps volunteer and member of the church. “God made the right partners come together and we were hosting before we knew much about what that meant.”
Though the hosting site has come to an end for now, the work of Wintergarden will continue to have an impact through its food pantry, which feeds more than 2,000 people on a regular basis, and also as the church's story is spread far and wide.
“I have taken your story of what you've done as a hosting site to so many other places” to inspire others, Reitz said during the church service. As people hear about the work the church community has done, “you can continue to be a witness.”
PDA has several other host sites. For general questions about volunteering, contact the PDA Call Center at [email protected] or 866-732-6121.
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