Christians offer help to Port Aransas residents

Juniors from Bishop Gorman High School, Hwiho Kim and Hannah Huffman pull weeds at a business called The Shack in Port Aransas.  

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A group of students and teachers from Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School in Tyler, Texas were among several other Christian groups who helped businesses and residents in Port Aransas get back to some normalcy after the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey several months ago.
 

Juniors from Bishop Gorman High School, Alexandra Schuermann, Hannah Dunn and Juliana Alvarado level the ground in front of the gate at The Shack in Port Aransas. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

The group arrived one week before their Spring Break, March 4-8, as part of their school's Junior Christian Service Immersion program. The aim of Junior Christian Service, according to the school's website, is to encourage students to identify an issue of social concern and formulate an action plan in response, with the outcome that students will have an intense, meaningful, significant, unpaid service experience addressing that need. Then they will analyze and report about that experience through a Gospel perspective in their theology and English classes.
 
The students who made the trip to Port Aransas bunked overnight in the House of Discernment at St. John Paul II High School Campus in Corpus Christi. They picked up trash buried far beneath the ground, leveling, painting and weeding.
 

Elsie Preciado is tasked with scheduling the work of groups with the houses or businesses that have asked for help. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

They were just one of several groups directed to help by signing up with Elsie Preciado at the Volunteer Center in Port Aransas. Preciado, herself a volunteer, is tasked with scheduling the work of groups with the houses or businesses that have asked for help.
 
"We don't care if it's a business or rental we are not selective.  If a person asks for help, we feel like our job is to help," she said.
 
Her husband, Oscar, meets with area residents, renters or business owners and ensures the jobs get done according to their wishes.
 
The Preciados are of retirement age but are far from retiring. Their home is in San Diego, California and they belong to East Lake Community Church. They are also members of the Recreational Vehicle Disaster Corps (RVDC). "It's RVers responding to communities affected by disasters," Elsie Preciado said.
 

Juniors from Bishop Gorman High School, fraternal twins William and Kenneth Knight and Joseph Martins level the ground at The Shack in Port Aransas. Mary Cottingham, South Texas Catholic

Due to the hurricane she and her husband have been volunteering since October, taking a month off for Christmas. They spent two months at the Donation Warehouse in San Antonio arrived in Port Aransas in January.
 
"We believe we have been so blessed in our lives, that now we feel that we're in a place where we can turn around and share with others, do for others and serve others. That’s our motivation. I am not ready to sit back and read a book or knit, although I do those things–I do them when I'm done here," Preciado said.
 
Elsie Preciado spoke highly of students from Regents High School, a private Christian school in Austin, who worked tirelessly on a property where much of the debris was from another house, which had been lifted up and dropped, sending debris into a neighbor's yard unscathed by the storm. The group from Austin removed shingles, pulled out dead plants and cut trees. She said the Regents group left residents feeling hopeful and amazed.
 
Another group working on a residents house were Lutheran. These college-aged students were from various places in Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois and stayed in the preschool at Trinity Lutheran Church in Corpus Christi.
 
Among volunteers from Trinity Lutheran are Billy and Alexis Seeger who committed their Spring Break to help out in Port Aransas. Usually, they would go to El Paso or build houses for people in Juarez, Mexico, but they saw a greater need in Port Aransas. They prepped and insulated a house for drywall. "It's a spring break thing, but it keeps you out of trouble," Billy Seeger said.
 
Bobbi Bowler, minister of Sandcastle Christian Church said her church donated the drywall for that house.
 
Many different Christian groups from all over the United States have brought hope, love, blood, sweat and tears to help make a catastrophic situation better for the people of Port Aransas, but more is still needed and "more help will be coming in the months ahead," Elsie Preciado said.