For years, Ed and Marian Stinnette have served as the hands and feet of Jesus in disaster zones, helping victims recover from devastating storms such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Now, the longtime Samaritan’s Purse volunteers and their home congregation, Port City Community Church, which has four locations in eastern North Carolina, are mobilizing close to home.
“I truly believe that it’s going to be the faith-based people that are going to be here for the long haul,” Ed Stinnette, 71, said from the historic river city of New Bern, North Carolina, where officials estimate Hurricane Florence damaged or destroyed 4,300 homes and 300 businesses. “They’re going to be the ones that are going to reach out and help the people recover from this.”
Convoy of Hope, a Springfield, Missouri-based nondenominational Christian organization, is partnering with Port City Community Church to distribute supplies from the church’s campus in Wilmington, North Carolina. As a result of Florence’s epic deluge, that hard-hit city became an island shut off from much of the world.
The Port City church also is teaming with Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical humanitarian aid organization headquartered in Boone, North Carolina, to help Florence victims all over the deluged state. At least 37 people in three states have died, including 27 in North Carolina, as a result of the powerful Category 4 hurricane.