Wintergarden Presbyterian Church is very excited and grateful to announce a new partnership with Mennonite Disaster Services (MDS). MDS has partnered with Florida United Methodist Conference (FLUMC), Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and Wintergarden to bring in volunteers to our community weekly through March of 2025 with the intention of finishing a large number of Hurricane Ian damaged homes, as well as to help with some emergency response team (ERT) work from hurricane’s Helene and Milton as time permits.
This, Presbyterians, Methodists, Mennonites and others joining in to help storm survivors, is a perfect example of the church coming together to be just that – the church! Being the hands and feet of Christ in our community. The collaboration has not been without its trials. For example, MDS moved in just as Helene was making itself known. And soon after arriving, the MDS team had to evacuate because of Milton! But they returned quickly and were right back to work.
Background
On September 28, 2022, our community was greatly impacted by the devastation of Hurricane Ian. The damage to homes, churches, businesses, medical facilities, service agencies, and tourism in Charlotte County, the surrounding area, was devastating. Wintergarden Presbyterian Church knew then that rebuilding Charlotte County (as well as Sarasota, Lee, and Desoto Counties) was going to take time, measured in years. Seeing the devastation, Wintergarden’s leadership took a leap of faith and answered God’s call to help their neighbors in a new, bigger way and began hosting work teams coming to rebuild the community. By January of 2023 they began hosting mission teams to help rebuild their neighbors’ homes. To achieve this they partnered with Missions on Wheels for the dorm trailers, FLUMC for construction oversight and case management, with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance PDA as a host site, and SBP for staffing and other resources. Now, MDS has joined this collaboration bringing new teams to this community.
That was Wintergarden’s first experience doing long-term disaster recovery work. Devon Beisser Andrews, Pastor explains, “After Ian, we jumped into hosting volunteer work teams. We were new to this type of work, but our neighbors needed help and we felt called to help. We believe it’s gone well and we definitely learned a lot. Now, with the new storms, there’s more need than ever.” Andrews continued, “Partnerships have been key to our ability to help our neighbors. We are grateful for the many disaster recovery partners who have joined us in this vital work. We realize we have a great impact together then individually.” These mission teams have worked on debris removal, painting projects, drywall, ceiling work, and so much more.
In 2023 Wintergarden hosted 15 volunteer groups, with a total of 210 volunteers. Together they worked on 25 projects for 8477 hours of volunteer hours. And so far in 2024 they are pacing to surpass those numbers with volunteers who came from all over the country and included church mission groups, college organizations, and others with a heart to help rebuild.
About the Wintergarden Presbyterian Church
The Wintergarden mission is to feed people physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally in our community. As they live into our mission statement, they hope to embody being a church of love, hope, and friendship. Since June of 2019, they have had a weekly food pantry every Thursday. They began feeding 40 families a week and now serve over 500 families a week! This includes being open within days of Ian, Helene, and Milton! And in the case of Ian, doing so despite having received significant damage to their building. Devon Beisser Andrews, Pastor explains, “Overall, people don’t realize that food insecurity increases when natural disaster impacts a community that is already struggling. The two are integrated and our call as a faith community is to continue to figure out ways to care and support our neighbors in need.” Since Hurricane Ian and our recent storms, Wintergarden continues to host work teams that are working to rebuild our community.
On Wintergarden’s property, the hurricane Ian blew off part of the roof and as a result the rain poured into our sanctuary for 15 hours. This resulted in the need to not only replace the roof, and completely redo the sanctuary and kitchen, some other areas of the church. Because of this, Wintergarden had to resort to worshiping under a tent for 10 months as the church building was restored and renovated both inside and out. Hurricane Ian also decimated our food forest and did significant damage to our community gardens both of which provide food for the community. They have been back in the building since July of 2023 and are grateful to announce the building did well during the recent storms.Throughout, they have remained determined to feed their neighbors and host and serve the groups coming to help as well. Wintergarden began their disaster relief work while the building was still in disrepair, hosting their first teams in January of 2023.
Wintergarden Presbyterian Church is grateful for the many partners we have supporting us through these efforts including: the Mennonite Disaster Services (MDS), United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), Florida Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Network (FLAPDAN), Community Foundation of Sarasota, St. Bernard Project (SBP), Missions on Wheels, and Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC). For more information, visit https://www.wintergardenpres.org/ or call 941-743-5335 or email wintergardenpres@gmail.com and others.
About our partners
Florida United Methodist Conference (FLUMC) Disaster Recovery Ministry deploys trained volunteers and volunteer teams to cleanup and debris removal, as well as information and referral, spiritual care and, the long-term recovery as is being done for Hurricane Ian survivors in this area.
Mennonite Disaster Services’ (MDS) goal is to restore hope for survivors of disasters. They do this by recruiting, organizing and empowering volunteers to repair and rebuild the homes of those impacted by disasters in Canada and the U.S.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) is the emergency and refugee program of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. PDA enables congregations and mission partners of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) to witness to the healing love of Christ through caring for communities adversely affected by crisis and catastrophic events.
Missions on Wheels. Missions on Wheels ’ mission provides living quarters to non-profit organizations and local governments to bolster their response to disaster and community outreach at little or no cost to the organization or user. They are also veteran founded and operated.
SBP, founded in 2006 as St. Bernard Parish, started in the months after Hurricane Katrina and has since become a national leader in disaster resilience and recovery. With the help of 150,000 volunteers, SBP has since rebuilt homes for more than 6,300 families in 14 communities across the U.S. and the Bahamas.
