‘The hands and feet of God’: Cogan Station churchgoers leave to help clean up Pine Island, Florida, community

A group of volunteers from Fairlawn Community Church, Cogan Station, are making their way to Florida this weekend to help out with hurricane relief in the wake of Ian.

The group of nine men are heading down to Pine Island and plan to return Friday.

"A lot of these places had 4- to 6-feet of water. Everything's just gone. Their stoves, refrigerators, furniture. It's just no longer any good," said Jim Barrett, a member of Fairlawn Community Church.

The group will help in any way it can, providing general clean-up and rebuilding.

"We just want to be the hands and feet of God. We just want Him to use us. We want to be a blessing to the people down there," Barrett said.

The crew, consisting of Barrett, Jim Bechtol, Mike Rhone, Monty Hornberger, Tom Murphy, Gale Boyen, Jim Polk, Thad Temple and Greg O'Dell, will stay at The First Baptist Church of Pine Island.

Most of the men have had experience helping with hurricane relief. In 2017, a group from Fairlawn Community Church drove to Florida to help out after Hurricane Irma.

"We did a lot of cleanup of houses. Putting tarps on roofs. There were travel trailers that we crushed with skid steer to take them out to the curb because they were just demolished from the flood. Things like taking furniture out to the curb -- A lot of home clean-up," Barrett said. "We're going to do very similar things.

"I know we are doing some drywall work because so much of the area down there was flooded. So drywall work and tile work on floors. There will be a lot of tree cutting from trees that have come down," he added.

"We're working through the First Baptist Church of Pine Island. The pastor down there is Pastor Jim Olsen," Barrett said. "My wife and I for the last two winters have been going down to that area. So that's the connection -- When the hurricanes hit, I wanted to try to get a crew from up here at our church to go down there, to help people out and be a blessing," he said.

With hurricane relief clean-up, the work that needs done can sometimes be unpredictable.

"You just never know. And that's one of the things that the pastor said to me and from doing the trip in The Keys. Everything is so flooded down there. It can just change from one minute to the next because getting supplies is very, very hard. If you're expecting something and it doesn't come, you just need to shift to something different," Barrett said.

"We're taking a John Deere Gator side by side, a small tractor with a bucket on the front end of it, chainsaws, circular saws and drills -- just a number of different power tools. Things like wheel barrels, some generators and a few small wire feed welders. You never know what you're going to get into, so we just tried to take an assortment of different things," Barrett said.

The group is also taking 27 buckets of cleaner that were donated to help with general clean-up.

"We requested that people purchase five gallon buckets with lids. And then inside that bucket they were putting things like Clorox and Lysol and Pine Sol cleaner, rags, plastic gloves, small brushes, mold and mildew cleaner just to pass out to people," Barrett said.

"We will work hard and be exhausted by the end of the day but I know as a team we will also be blessed," Barrett said. "We want to get down there and love on people and help people and people," he added.

"I remember when we went to The Keys, they laughed with us, cried with us, talked with us. They just couldn't believe that people that would take time out of their busy schedules just to go down and help," Barrett said.

Those who would like to make a monetary donation can send a check to Fairlawn Community Church and mark it as hurricane relief. Funds will go directly towards the trip. Any funding leftover will be donated to The First Baptist Church of Pine Island for further clean-up expenses.