When Deacon Doug Yglesias of Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church first saw news reports on Thursday, Oct. 3 of the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, “The Holy Spirit was pulling on my heart,” he said. “I knew I had to do something.”
Initially, he thought he would see what he could collect in a rented truck and possibly take two people with him. Within five days, the Holy Spirit gathered enough people for a convoy of eight vehicles, including three trailers filled with power equipment and other needed items, to head for the afflicted region with aid for two Catholic churches in isolated areas.
St. Brendan’s parishioners collected needed items and a large sum of money at weekend Masses on Oct. 5 and 6 to purchase additional items.
“I’ve helped with other collections over the years, but the Lord was tugging on many hearts for this one,” said Deacon Yglesias, who has served the Hilliard parish since his ordination to the diaconate in November 2020. “I could understand what those people were going through because my family and I survived Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992. We remember the hope we received when someone showed up with a simple thermos of water.”
Deacon Yglesias said that once he decided to provide help, he found out how much it would cost to rent a U-Haul truck to carry items to North Carolina, then searched for the locations of Catholic churches in the Diocese of Charlotte that were in the vicinity of Asheville, the largest city in the region affected by the hurricane, but far enough away that help may not be easily available.
“I finally made contact with two churches – Sacred Heart in Brevard, a town of about 7,000 people 25 miles from Asheville, and St. Andrew’s in Mars Hill, which has about 2,000 people, is about 18 miles from Asheville and is a town with a Biblical name” honoring the site of one of St. Paul’s most famous speeches, he said.
Directors of religious education (DREs) of the two parishes told him their greatest need was for generators, propane stoves, propane canisters, diapers, wipes, baby food, garbage cans, trash bags for debris collection and water.
“They were getting food donations, so that wasn’t an immediate concern,” he said. “Electricity was out for the whole region, so the bigger need was for larger items which could provide an alternative source of power.
“One of the DREs was in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina struck there in 2005 and said the situation in western North Carolina was much the same. Both DREs said they had reached the point of exhaustion after working 15-hour days and were extremely grateful for any help.”
Deacon Yglesias said he started calling people he knew at around 4 p.m. on Oct. 3 to see who might be willing to provide the requested items and to go to North Carolina with him.
“Things spread like wildfire,” he said.
One parishioner, Brian Quinn, spent his last three days of vacation to help. Many others stopped everything and began to pitch in.
“People asked about writing checks to me to help the hurricane victims. I felt it would be better to have the parish handle donations, so I called the pastor, Father Sean Dooley, and he was awesome. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said. He had to ask the parish staff to set up a special account and work with the parish communications team. I was worried that this would be disruptive, but they said it was no problem,” the deacon said.
“I got in touch with Heather Carrier with our parish St. Vincent de Paul conference who called the diocesan St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. By 7 p.m., we had the store’s collection trailer lined up to store donated items.
“Lee Salcone, our communications director who was in Pennsylvania, sent an email blast that went to all sorts of parish organizations and the response was tremendous. I felt it had to be God’s hand working through all of us to open our hearts.”
Father Dooley invited Deacon Yglesias to speak at that weekend’s Masses to ask for donations to the account and help with the hurricane recovery effort.
“I requested four things,” the deacon said. “Donations of supplies; donations of cash so we could buy supplies; volunteers who might be able to help do things like pull out ruined carpets and drywall or do home repair; and prayer.
“We set up a staging area in the St. Brendan’s parking lot to collect items and it became apparent by the time the last weekend Mass had ended that we would need more trucks,” he said. “We delivered 29 generators, 37 camp stoves, more than 200 propane canisters, plus shovels, baby items, canned food and an abundance of all the other things the parishes had requested.”
Another truck was donated by Penske Leasing. Steve Dickson, a parishioner with a commercial driver’s license, offered to drive the truck, and by 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 8, the Hilliard convoy, which included about 20 people, was headed south. “Much thanks to Father Jacob Stinnett, the parochial vicar, who got up extremely early to say Mass before our departure,” Deacon Yglesias said.
The group reached North Carolina by about 7 p.m. that day, splitting the load so that each of the two parishes requesting help would get about the same number of items, and started unloading.
“Both DREs were in tears because of all the help they were receiving,” Deacon Yglesias said. “We met at St. Brendan’s a little before 4:30 in the morning and the relief missionaries were still unloading trucks at 11 at night in North Carolina, all with smiles on their faces.”
“Besides getting stuff from our trucks, we helped unload other trucks in assembly-line fashion. One truck from another church arrived after being scared off because of the chaos involved at another location, so we helped unload it, too.” He said the items were set up in supermarket-style fashion so people could quickly find the things they most needed.
On Wednesday, Oct. 9, the group helped with recovery efforts. “We began the day in prayer and then went to work. Some of us were part of a group of Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists and people from Habitat for Humanity who went to a trailer park where several families needed assistance removing their flooded belongings and removing damaged drywall,” the deacon said.
“Many of us from Hilliard went to a trailer that was the home of a handyman and had a wooden deck precariously hanging that was just waiting to hurt someone,” he said. “We went right to work cutting the deck into thirds so the danger could be removed. The gentleman there was heartbroken because of the water damage to all his tools.
“Our team helped him pull the tools out and started oiling them to see what could be salvageable. We finished the deck teardown and began pulling drywall and started putting the debris in a dumpster, but it was so overloaded with items from that home and others that we started shoveling debris into one of our trucks and taking it to the local dump. The Habitat for Humanity people went to the nearest Home Depot to get new insulation and drywall.
“I saw the father we were helping, his shirt drenched in sweat, crouched down in an awkward position, adjusting some of the plumbing,” team member Joe Boroi said in a written reflection.
“In that moment, I felt a wave of Christ’s love for him, for his family, for all of us, as if it were too immense to contain. As I stood there in that room, almost two days into this journey, with little sleep and long hours of hard work, I realized I could still feel Christ’s presence radiating within me. He was alive in every aching muscle, every action.
“It was as if the Mass (of the previous day) had just ended, and we had stepped out of the chapel into the parking lot of the church. As I looked around the room, seeing the tired yet determined faces of my fellow travelers, I felt the depth of that love. It was sustaining all of us.”
“While we waited for supplies, we helped gut another home’s first floor with all its flooring, insulation and drywall ruined,” Deacon Yglesias said. “Once supplies arrived, we went back to work on the trailer and by 9 p.m. it had some of the floor, the insulation and much of the drywall replaced. We felt God with us the whole time, enabling us to do a hurricane of work to replace a hurricane’s worth of damages.
“The schoolchildren at St. Brendan’s packed and decorated paper bags with lunches for us and the people we were helping. We really appreciated having those meals with us on both days we were working on cleanup,” Deacon Yglesias said.
“We heard amazing stories regarding what people did with the items donated. In one case, young people from an adventure summer camp were able to bring two generators to people whose homes were on an isolated mountain road by taking the generators on all-terrain vehicles, going as far as they could and carrying them the rest of the way. In another, a child was able to return home from the hospital, since there was a generator available to run lifesaving medical equipment.
“The morning we went to work on the homes, we left a fully stocked hub filled with food, cleaning supplies, stoves and so forth. To our surprise, most of the material was gone by the time we got back. The churches served more than 700 people in need that day
“After two days of intense work, we headed back home on Thursday the 10th. We were on the ground in North Carolina for less than 60 hours, but what I saw and what we did will stay with me for the rest of my life,” Deacon Yglesias said.
He said another $25,000 has been raised in Hilliard since the group got back. Another trip to the stricken area with more supplies is planned early this month.
“Thanks to all the men’s groups, Knights of Columbus, St. Vincent De Paul, the moms of St. Brendan’s and students of the school, the Good Samaritans group from Sunbury St. John Neumann Church and all the business and individuals who helped,” he said. “The response of the people of the Columbus area to our request for help was amazing. So much good came from the generosity of the people who gave up their time, talent and treasure to perform a corporal work of mercy.
“It just shows what people can do when they decide to get past the restrictions of any bureaucracy and become the hands and feet of Christ.”