The North Florida Inland Long Term Recovery Group continued their mission to help residents of Jackson and Calhoun counties recover from Hurricane Michael.
Calhoun County resident Vasheda Hobbs said she was speechless when she was given the keys to her new home on Friday.
“I didn’t expect none of this,” Hobbs said. “But I just, I thank God because without him, none of this would have been possible.”
Hobbs said her journey to recovery after Hurricane Michael was a struggle.
“I continued to keep faith in God and trusting in him and I knew that he had a blessing for me,” Hobbs said. “This is my blessing.”
The North Florida Inland Long Term Recovery Group partners with organizations to help build and remodel homes for families still rebuilding and recovering after Hurricane Michael.
“You know people have waited and been patient as we have been rebuilding and to be able to welcome a family into a new home, it just doesn’t get any better,” said North Florida Inland Long Term Recovery Group Executive Director, Kristy Terry. “This is why we do what we do.”
Volunteers from HarvestCall built the Hobbs’ home. HarvestCall is an organization that looks to help people recover from natural disasters a year or two after the fact.
“It just seems like after every disaster there’s people that get help and there’s people that don’t,” said HarvestCall volunteer Tim Slagel.
Slagel said they were advised to cancel this project early on because of COVID-19. He said they still wanted to move forward with their plans.
“But at that point we had already met some of the homeowners we’d be working for and we looked them in the eyes and saw the hopelessness there and the little bit of hope they saw with maybe they were gonna get some relief from us so it was really hard to say ‘Yeah we’ll cancel,’” Slagel said. “Instead we worked through, ‘Well how can we make it work?’”
Hobbs said she has never felt more love than she did Friday.