The First Baptist Church’s volunteer group, Love Thy Neighbor, has adopted a small city in Georgia to provide aid in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
The Category 4 hurricane began its path in the country in Florida and made its way through 500 miles to the Southern Appalachians, including Adrian, Georgia.
“I am 60-plus years old, and I have never ever seen anything like this in my life,” Adrian Mayor Wynola Smith said. “It was just very devastating. We’ve never had anything like this in our area before.”
With only about 700 residents, the city struggled to pick itself back up with its small budget but is slowly working toward recovery with the help of donations and group efforts.
“Right now, we’re finally, finally in the final stages,” Smith said. “They are beginning to pick up some of the debris, but we still have trees on houses. We still got a real big mess to clean up.”
Seeing communities in need, Willie Curtis, a deacon at Taylor’s TFBC, enlisted the help of the Rev. Anthony Watson, the TFBC community and his veteran group, Now What, to help a fellow small city.
“We heard about the damage, but when we went online and looked at … how it impacted (Adrian) … It stayed in my heart for a while, and it still is,” Curtis said. “We know how (Taylor is) and all the different organizations here that help people. Why couldn’t we, as (Taylor) Ducks, you know, reach out all the way across the country to Georgia?”
TFBC church members Betty King, Georgia Brandon and Beverly Aikens make up the volunteer group Love Thy Neighbor and have put together many annual projects to give back to the Taylor community, such as cooking weekly meals for fellow churchgoers, a community Thanksgiving meal, a fan drive to cool senior citizens and a toy drive during Christmas.
“Knowing that I could do something for somebody else makes me feel good,” King said.
The group banded together to collect donations of essential items, money and gift cards and worked together to make 75 handmade pillows.
The pillow idea stemmed from a previous project Curtis had done with students in Alaska, who sent their handmade cushions to Afghanistan.
While Curtis and his students simply used glue to put theirs together, the ladies elevated their product by recruiting friend Linda Allen, who offered her crafting expertise and allowed them to use her art studio to create vinyl decals that read “Love Thy Neighbor” along with the city or church name to show their recipient where the love comes from.
“Just by making those pillows, it made me feel like I’m giving someone some love, some comfort, some warmth and a little bit of faith, too, if they lost (it) because of the storm,” Allen said.
“Making pillows — it’s like our hands are on there to extend love to somebody else,” Aikens added.
On Nov. 10, Watson will lead a small group to travel to Adrian’s White Grove Missionary Baptist Church and present the 75 pillows along with the donations the church has gathered so far.
“We just wanted to come together to help our sister church and Adrian to at least be a blessing to them in the interim until they get back on their feet in any way we could,” Watson said. “(Reaching out) shows the heart of a city. It shows that all cities have the capability of helping because it’s not the city, it’s the people in the city, and Taylor has a lot of great people who want to help and make a difference.”
However, the church will be accepting donations until Nov. 23 to mail at a later date. Donation boxes can be found at TFBC, 300 N. Robertson St., and Sirloin Stockade, 3607 N. Main St.
Community members are encouraged to donate items like diapers, canned or boxed food, water, charcoal, lighter fluid or Walmart gift cards to allow Adrian residents to buy essential items. Those interested in making monetary donations can contact Curtis at 210514-8988 or Allen at 626-826-4993.
