The Four Corners

Volunteer teams are the life blood of HCRN’s disaster recovery and response work. This week, we were blessed to have volunteer teams in four counties. Each county is at a different point in the recovery process. To have this much support on these projects means so much to us and to the communities our volunteers have come to serve. Let’s take a quick look at the kind of work going on across Northern California.

At our home base in Middletown, we were happy to welcome a group from Vista Ridge, TX! They are mostly made up of teenagers who wanted to help wherever they could. It was their team leader, Daira Carran, who specifically wanted to serve in California. Carran said, “I usually offer three choices for the annual mission trip. I only took one option to the vote, and it was Hope City. I’m so glad God directed us to serve here this week.”

In Santa Rosa, we were proud to welcome our inaugural team from nearby Novato, CA! The team from the Presbyterian Church of Novato has assisted all throughout the community, including helping to break ground on one of our first rebuilding projects in Sonoma County. The team is also made up of mostly teenagers with kind and giving hearts. They’ve had the opportunity to stay at one of our church partner’s buildings and get to know more about Santa Rosa, as well.

Redwood Valley has been host to our AmeriCorps team, and thanks to their efforts we are close to being finished on two builds. The team has been working on both homes since near the beginning of their building processes and has learned what goes into a house, but also what goes into building relationships with our homeowners. We are so excited for both homes to be finished and it wouldn’t be possible without the help of these wonderful young adults.

Up in Paradise, we have been busy with over 80 volunteers who have come to the town to assist in cleanup. This week, the focus was on cleaning up the schools of Paradise. The groups were made up of mostly teenagers as well, and assisted in getting the various school properties to be welcoming for the returning students. We spoke with a kindergarten teacher, Kelly Levin who said, “I see all these kids working and they’re banging chairs to get them in the dump truck. It just warms my heart, we’re so thankful. There’s a lot to get this school ready.” The teams also prayed over leadership of the schools and local churches.

Truly, we were blessed to have so many wish to serve with us on all of our projects. For so many young people to give up their summer to volunteer and work with fire survivors, it means the world to us at HCRN and even more to the fire survivors in these communities.

If you’d like to join in on any of our five open projects, feel free to call or text Travis Cox at 574-333-7728

We’re so excited to be able to offer an HCRN NorCal app on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.