The Seventh-day Adventist Church has been one of the agencies through which relief supplies were made available to members – and to a certain extent, to other persons in Anguilla, during the early days following the impact of Hurricane Irma on September 6, 2017.
As part of that assistance, some building material for the repairing of a number of homes, damaged by the hurricane, is now being made available – this time essentially for members of the church.
In announcing this on Saturday, April 21, at Mount Fortune SDA Church, Resident District Minister, Pastor Trent Berg, said: “Brothers and sisters, we want you to know that it the determination of the North Caribbean Conference to do all that we can to meet the needs of our members throughout our Conference – and churches stretching from the US Virgin Islands to our region.
“At a time when we are reeling from the impact of Hurricane Irma, our challenge is great. The shipping companies are quite busy trying to get items into the island. All of our brothers and sisters who provided information about items they need assistance with, are asked to contact Sister Maria Webster, President of the local ADRA relief committee.”
Pastor Berg continued: “I know that a shipment of galvanise arrived in Anguilla this week and will be delivered to those members who requested materials. I want to ask that you remember our church leaders in prayer – as they try to grapple with the task – because there are so many needs throughout our Conference, and they are doing as much as they can to help.
“I believe that when the order was compiled from all of the hurricane-affected islands that the cost came to 1.3 million US dollars. It may not be possible to fill the whole order but the Conference will be making an effort to provide what it can. I want to assure you that the Conference is determined to assist with the recovery process here in Anguilla, St. Martin/St. Maarten, Tortola, Virgin Gorda, St. John’s, St. Thomas and St. Croix.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Maria Webster said that supplies of cement, purchased from Lake’s Do-It-Best Hardware, had already been distributed to a number of persons in Anguilla.
She recalled that, shortly after the hurricane, the Seventh-day Adventist and the local ADRA (Adventist Development Relief Agency) Committee had embarked on a food drive for the community at large – Adventists and non-Adventists. She said that it was a joint effort with the Anguilla Government and other agencies involved in providing relief food supplies. “We were able to reach about six hundred people in the post-Irma food relief and many, many of them were not Adventists. They were people who were referred to us by the Government agencies,” she explained. “We had workers from those agencies who were able to help distribute the food items to those persons.”
She further explained that the aim was now to assist Adventists with various other needs such as lost roofs among other types of damage. “They were given letters to take to Lake’s Hardware and they were responsible for collecting the cement supplies,” she stated. Mrs. Webster was unable to immediately give an estimate of the cost of the materials saying: “At this point I am not certain because the effort has not been completed.”
She went on: “ADRA, which everybody must have heard about, is responsible for responding to needs wherever there are disasters in the world. It just happened that we had a major disaster last year in this part of the world so ADRA came in to assist us. We never had a local grouping, so I was asked to spearhead that. Officials from the Conference came in, oversaw the launch to distribute the food items; they came back in February/March and set up the group. The food items were distributed by the Community Services Departments of each of the SDA Churches in Anguilla.”
Those working with Mrs. Webster on the Anguilla ADRA group are: Deputy Director, Miss Jennyville Smith; Public Relations Officer, Mr. Lester Fleming; Secretary, Ms. Karen Fleming; Treasurer, Mrs. Linda Rogers; Logistics Coordinator, Mr. Damien Benjamin; and Community Board Member, Mr. Sanford Richardson, Commissioner of Community Development.
