The sobering sights of a fridge being flipped over, baby dolls floating by, and scattered Legos across the lawn greeted Ronnie Rentz, who planted Covenant Hope Church in St. Petersburg, Floriday, in 2022, when he returned home following Hurricane Helene’s landfall in late September.
“When Hurricane Helene came through, we got hit with three feet of water … we lost about 90% of everything we owned,” Rentz said. “I couldn’t even get into the house at first because all the water had picked up our furniture and jammed it against the door. And then when I finally got in, it was sobering. The fridge was flipped over, baby dolls were floating by — I just sat there for awhile before I called my wife. And all I could say was, ‘It’s bad. What do we do now?’”
‘What do we do now’
The answer to his question, ‘What do we do now?’ was quickly answered the day after Rentz returned home when the beauty of the local church was on full display. Teams of Florida Baptists from Covenant Life Church in Tampa — Rentz’s sending church — immediately jumped into action, helping the pastor wade through what was left of his family’s belongings.
Reflecting on the “beauty of the local church,” Rentz recalled how teams of more than 30 people worked tirelessly to salvage clothing and toys, dry out documents and photos of memories, and have his wife’s jewelry professionally cleaned mere days after the Category 4 hurricane made landfall.
“We had people coming out of the woodwork to pray, encourage, call us and really seek to care for us,” he recalled. “They started grabbing clothes, toys, anything they could save. We had a crew in the backyard cleaning Legos. We had a lady who owns a jewelry shop take what she could salvage of my wife’s jewelry to get it professionally cleaned. They worked in shifts — morning, afternoon and evening — it was amazing to see.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Jessica Pigg and originally published by the Florida Baptist Convention.
