In our last post, we said that we are a few weeks behind on our posting. This is working out for us, because we have had several things happen that needed our attention and gave us an opportunity to work on something that we have been wanting to do for a while. Read on to find out what has kept us from staying connected and what we want to do to help our community. 

On Saturday, October 26, 2019, a bad storm blew through our area. Some say that it was straight line winds. Some say it was a tornado. Some say it was remnants of a tropical storm from the gulf. Whatever it was, it caused a lot of damage to our area. There were trees blown down all over the county, knocking power lines down, landing on houses and blocking roads. Thankfully, there were no major injuries or fatalities. 

The pictures above were taken from the Humphreys County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page. This a small sample of damage. There were rooftops blown into trees. Semi trucks blown over while on an interstate bridge. Many people were without power. There may be some still without. We were fortunate to only have one small tree fall in our yard and not cause any damage. However, we were without power for 6 days and nights. Luckily we were able to borrow a generator from a family member, allowing us to keep some lights on , the fridge running, and to cook food. Thank God for family! However, with the power poles and lines down, that meant that the Internet lines to our house were also down. Where we live, even though it is within a cell tower range, the cell signal is terrible at our house because of a large hill blocking its reach to us. On a good day, we may have one bar of 3G service.  When the Internet is out, we are disconnected from the outside world, sort of. Communication was limited to coming into our town and being able to use our cell phones.  I, Evan, worked with my team to ensure that the school system IT infrastructure was ready to go as soon as school resumed. 

I am afraid that we are kind of use to situations like this, and as I said, Lisa and I were very fortunate. This is not the case for many, and still many are in need of help. Lisa and I have been trying to figure out how we can help our community more. We are able use our hands to help by checking on our neighbors and offering our assistance, but this only limits us to those we come across in passing. We have been trying to figure out how we can help more people on a larger scale. This brings me to what we have been working on. We have opened a merchandise store to help support our efforts. You can access the store from the top of this page. Yes, we will benefit from the sale of the products in our store, but the real reason is to give to our community. You can browse and select one or many of the products, currently shirts and hoodies, and the proceeds from your purchase will go toward helping your neighbors with financial needs. Certain items in our fundraiser section, that when purchased, 50% of the proceeds will go toward a non-profit organization that we choose needs help at that time.

Our current fundraiser will be going to the Humphreys County Long Term Relief Organization. This organization helps those in our county with monetary and labor needs that are and have been affected by the recent storm in our area. The HCLTRO reaches out to find those that can’t physically clean up and repair their property and then provide the relief that they need to “make their homes a home again.”  If you would like to help them and aren’t able to be a volunteer to help, then a monetary donation will go a long way. They provide furniture, appliances, roof repairs, removal of duct work for HVAC systems, and many other ways to attempt to give relief. That’s just a brief sample of what they do.  If you want to help, you can through The Glenn Home store above. The purchase of one of the “Bless Our Home” shirts (T-shirt, Long Sleeve, and/or Hoodie) will help families that are in need. 

We have also teamed up with Trull Family Pharmacy. They are a family owned pharmacy in our town, and together with them, are wanting to make the effort even better. They are going to have an anniversary event on Saturday, November 16th to celebrate their one year of being open to the public. Inside their  beautiful store is a gift shop. On that Saturday, they also are going to donate proceeds from sales of their gift shop to help the Humphreys County Long Term Recovery Organization.  We have talked with them since the day they announced their plans of wanting to give back to the community that supports them and came up with this partnership. We will combine our proceeds and present a donation to the HCLTRO.  Both Trull Family Pharmacy, Lisa, and I appreciate your help in our effort to help the neighbors in our community!

Be on the watch for many other fundraisers that we will have in the coming future!