Hurricane Helene left thousands in need of help this past week, including many in North Carolina where the local churches are helping out in a major way.
While roughly 1,000 people are still unaccounted for, Hurricane Helene hit the east coast of the U.S.A. with a vengeance over the past few days, with over 200 deaths and counting.
"I was hearing story after story; people are broken," says Kristi Brown of First Baptist Church in Hendersonville, NC. "This is going to take years, not weeks, to recover from."
Hendersonville faced much devastation after the hurricane rolled through. Afterwards, First Baptist Church and its congregants stepped up to bring necessities to the community, including bottled water as there was no running water for most occupants of the town.
Out of Hendersonville's 15,000 people, about a third of them drove through the parking lot of the church to get supplies.
Brown was one of 100 volunteers from her church who helped out, including praying for anyone who asked for it.
"I found when I would ask people to pray about stuff, they would tell me some things to pray about: their home, a missing loved one, whatever the need," Brown said. "But they all were saying, 'I just don't know what to do with this.'"
One woman who drove through was feeling mixed emotions as she had just enough sanitized bottles for her baby as the storm hit.
“She started crying when I first started speaking to her,” Brown said. "She said, 'It's so overwhelming.' I just kept hearing that nobody was prepared for this."
The impact of the hurricane is unimaginable as many people's homes are completely gone, from flooding or downed trees.
In Desperate Need of Hope
"After I prayed with [one woman], she just reached her arms up — I didn't know her, never met her in my life — she said, 'Can I hug you?' I said absolutely. So we just hugged through the car window, and she just embraced me, would not let go and she was sobbing in her car. People right now just need people to care and love them, and let them know it's going to be OK."
While many are struggling with what to do next as emergency services start to set up in the wake of the disaster, the community has also seen unity during this time.
"This storm is bringing our community together in a way that I've not seen in a long time. I think nationwide, our community has been divided in this whole political season that we're in. But now people are helping people. So a blessing is, I think, the unity that's formed because we're all in crisis together."
The church will continue offering food, water, and basic hygiene needs to the community for as long as they can, as well as prayer.
"As we were praying with them and giving them food, water, all the things they needed, we were just letting them know that there is a hope and there is a peace. None of this caught God off guard. Even though we're all caught off guard with it, He's still going to provide all the needs that everybody needs, so we were trying to give them that spiritual hope today."
This is a corrected story. An earlier version reported there had been 500 confirmed deaths connected to the storm.