Eight Days of Hope providing relief to Hurricane Ian victims

The ministry's "Rapid Response Teams" have been working providing hope and healing to hurricane victims

PONTOTOC COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) – A Northeast Mississippi-based ministry is providing hope and healing to victims of Hurricane Ian in Florida.

Eight Days of Hope deployed its Rapid Response Teams to the Sarasota Florida area only days after Hurricane Ian made landfall on September 28th.

Donald Dabney is a Rapid Response manager and has been working in the area. He says the damage is widespread.

“A lot of tree damage, roof damage, trees on houses, we are getting, had several houses that were flooded and water has gone down where we can get in and start doing mud outs, get furniture out, walls out and we’re just fixing to start putting dehumidifiers in houses, and tomorrow we will be ready to go in and spray and kill the mold,” Dabney said, via a Zoom interview.

More than 120 volunteers are working in people’s homes and preparing meals.

There are also trailers with washers and dryers, and shower trailers.

All of the work is provided at no cost to homeowners.  Dabney says it’s also an opportunity to share a message of hope.

“We come to minister to the families and share God’s love and His Word with the people.  The work comes secondary, we encourage our volunteers, throughout the day, if the homeowner is around, to go talk to them, spend two minutes with them, give them their two-minute testimony,” he said.

Dabney has been volunteering with Eight Days of Hope for about ten years and says it never gets old.

“We come here thinking we are going to bless the homeowners, but we are the ones getting the blessings, it’s meeting people at their lowest point and seeing them have hope, when you leave their house, you see they have hope again. A lot of the people are broken, they’re really broken bad,” Dabney said.

There’s still a lot of work to be done and it’s all coordinated from Eight Days of Hope headquarters in Pontotoc County.

Crews will be in Sarasota through the 29th, then they will be in Fort Myers working through the middle of November.

For information about how to volunteer, go to eightdaysofhope.com

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