The world-wide Seventh-day Adventist Church, renowned for its spiritual and physical care of everyone within its reach, is continuing, with even greater zeal, to meet the needs of the whole person in these increasingly difficult times facing humanity.

Presentation to Renford Carty

Here in Anguilla, the local Church has done and is doing much within its own membership and in the wider community to respond to needy cases and to bring about relief and hope for many individuals and families.

The Church found much pleasure in rendering assistance in two cases on Thursday, April 10. In the first, a sizeable financial contribution was made to Renford (Duberry) Carty of Lower South Hill to enable him to obtain medical treatment in Puerto Rico. The recipient is required to travel there twice a year and has little resources of his own to meet the expenses of the trip and the treatment. Before that, he had traveled to mainland United States for medical appointments.

Presentation to Joseph Carty and family

“It is a joy to be in the Church and to see how God’s people work for one another,” Carty, who is a member of Jireh Tabernacle of Seventh-day Adventists at Lower South Hill, commented.

Pastors Danny Philip and Carl Hastings, who were at the presentation, said they were delighted that the Church was able to make the donation and to show its caring love and support for the recipient of the cheque. They were accompanied by Christine Waite, the Community Services Leader at Jireh Tabernacle.

The second case in which the SDA Church district in Anguilla gave assistance involved Joseph Carty and family of George Hill. In July last year they lost all of their possessions when a fire, caused by an explosion from a small cooking gas cylinder, completely destroyed their home at North Hill.

Carty, his wife and their three children were obliged to move into an apartment at Sandy Ground where they paid US$80 per night. Since then, the Department of Social Development has accommodated them, at no charge, at a house in George Hill which may be referred to as a temporary shelter. The house, previously owned by Neville Thomas, was acquired by Government to facilitate the development of Wallblake Airport and is one of the buildings at the western end of the runway earmarked for demolition.

The SDA Church gave the distressed family a bundle of steel and paid for a quantity of ready-mixed concrete. The materials are to be used to construct the foundation for a small family house which Mr. Carty is struggling to build just south of the airport in the Long Ground area.

The family has already begun, from their low means, to stockpile a few pallets of blocks on the building site. Carty evoked much feelings of sympathy, if not anger, when he told the small gathering: “Last month somebody come up in a truck, take up a pallet of blocks and drive out with them.” It is one of those cases in which thieves are raiding construction sites and which the police are concerned about.

Carty has no steady job or income and, with the spiraling cost of building these days, it is extremely difficult for him to raise the money needed to build his house within a short period. An appeal is therefore being made to charitable organisations and philanthropic individuals to assist him and his family to have a small home they can call their own.

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