With Hurricane Dorian threatening, Treasure Coast residents embrace faith
The temperature pushed 90 degrees outside Good News Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon as Pastor Harris Shaw comforted the faithful, but he barely broke a sweat.
Believers spoke of feeling less anxious after the service. Forecasts were placing Hurricane Dorian farther west, closer to the Treasure Coast. Closer to Shaw’s hometown of Fort Pierce, where he leads a congregation of about 100 in a church in the historic Lincoln Park neighborhood, on the same street where he was born. This is his home, and by God’s grace, Shaw believes Dorian will turn away.
If not, he will open the doors of his church for those seeking shelter. He will keep sending prayers up in hopes that blessings come down, softening Dorian’s blow.
“We got to keep the faith. God’s going to do what he’s going to do,” Shaw said. “We’re going to do what we need to do.”
Many residents along the Treasure Coast continued to mount shutters, nail boards and keep an eye trained on weather updates Sunday. Through the weekend, predictions improved and worsened. Evacuations were announced as much of Florida’s Atlantic coast fell under hurricane watches and warnings while the storm ravaged the Bahamas.
Several people embraced their faith as a cornerstone in their hurricane plan.
“It’s an on-and-off mental game. Like, some of the reporters are saying the storm is moving back out in the water and they say it’s moving back in,” said Julius S. Baker Jr., a 69-year-old Vero Beach native. “You have to know that there’s a better person than us that’s over this storm. You know that I mean? And that’s God.”
Baker splits the year between Vero Beach and Dallas, Texas. He said he’d be devastated to see the storm change the face of his community, but he feels people are taking the storm seriously. He did his part to help. A friend who maintains a Fort Pierce graveyard called him over Sunday to help put up shutters.
In Vero Beach, Brandon Coyle and Michelle Hatch did the same, helping out where they can.
On Saturday, they were hanging out on the corner of Bougainvillea Lane and Ocean Drive, waiting for a retired pastor to pick them up so they could help him close his accordion shutters. The homeless couple have been sleeping in the meter room of a local business lately. When that’s not an option, they look for a place to camp out.
Coyle, 27, and Hatch, 22, plan to seek shelter at a local high school if the weather worsens. The pair struck up a conversation with Barbara Thompson, who’s owned a property near Ocean Drive for about five decades. She lives above the Grind + Grape, a coffee shop and bar run by her daughter that is now shuttered for the storm. She planned to join her family farther inland. The business can withstand a rainy day, Thompson said, if a higher power wills it.
“I’ve been here for 50 years, and it’s not my first storm,” Thompson said. “I just feel that the Lord knows what he’s doing, and he’ll protect whatever needs to be protected. I have great faith that we’ll get through it all.”
On a walk through the neighborhood, Thompson and the young couple talked about how unimportant material possessions felt in that moment.
“God is good, right?” Hatch said.
“He gives us so much,” Thompson said. “All that is here is for Him to take.”
For some, the mood took a downward turn Sunday as outlook worsened for St. Lucie and Indian River counties. The call for evacuation stirred more anxiety than piety.
“People might not have the means to leave,” said Terrice Robinson, a 26-year-old Fort Pierce native, sitting on the porch of her grandparents’ home near Shaw’s church. They, along with her boyfriend, are going to ride out the storm behind the boarded-up windows of the home.
“Not everybody has a big car to pack up everything they need,” she said.
Over on Hutchinson Island, bar owner Betty McGee also had some nerves. And a prayer to send up.
“Yesterday, I was gung-ho —it’s turning! Oh yay hoo! The Lord, you’re behind me. You missed us again.” she said. “But today, it’s like oh don’t do this Lord. Keep going north. So I’m a little more doubtful.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2019 at 7:31 AM.
