Twelve members of the St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Mission youth group, Elena Orozco, Chris Andrade, Zayra Andrade, Tanya and Samantha Chavez, Andrea Lopez, Aaron Manzanares, Daniel Meza, Fernanda Murillo, Luz Perez, Bernice Luquin, and Fernanda Ruiz-Yin, gave up their fall break from school to travel to Naples, Fla., to do Hurricane Irma recovery work.
Overseeing the group and working with them were Kathy O’Brien, the mission’s youth director; Steve Miles, a parishioner; and Father Tom Charters, GHM, St. Michael’s pastor.
On the first day the group assisted at St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Naples. Catholic Charities located itself at the parish and implemented help and recovery immediately after the hurricane hit.
St. Michael youth put together bags of groceries
for the needy at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and Center during their Florida trip.
When the group arrived they went to work cleaning up the parish grounds. They spent five hours picking up bags of Styrofoam roofing insulation which lined the perimeter of the parish. The hurricane had blown the insulation from a trailer camp which had been greatly damaged. Later in the day, the group saw the trailer camp from which the insulation came.
On the second day, the group went to Immokalee, an area bordering the Everglades. Immokalee is a huge area populated by Haitians and Hispanic migrants who work the agricultural fields. The poverty level of Immokalee is 43.9 percent.
At Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and Center, under the guidance of members and volunteers from the center and Catholic Charities, the group put together bags of groceries, which they then distributed to the elderly living in apartment units in the area. The group did more than merely hand the groceries to the elderly. They spent time visiting and talking with the people. The elderly shared their stories with the youth, and the youth shared with one another what they heard at the evening Mass.
