The yellow hats and T-shirts signaled relief this morning for the hard hit people of Birch and Rebecca streets.

“They’re our neighbors,” said Lawrence Sandy, one of the many members of the N.C. Baptist Men’s Disaster Recovery team. “They may not live next door to us but they’re our neighbors.”

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An uprooted tree slammed into this house on Rebecca Street.

The group came to the neighborhood to help clear debris, saw limbs and give emotional and spiritual support to the people in the neighborhood.

Corliss Atkins had three trees go through his Birch Street home Saturday. “I’m blessed,” he said. “If I had been lying in my bed I could have been laying there dead. A tree fell in the bedroom.”

Instead, he and his wife watched new reports of the approaching storm and they escaped injury. Everyone in the neighborhood escaped injury.

About 30 volunteers came to the area this morning, said team leader J.E. Skinner. “We clean it up and fill up holes.”

Team members remove branches and debris.

The work they do is free, Skinner explained. “We do God’s love and plant a seed in a person’s heart. It gives us a chance to help someone when they don’t have anyone to help them.”

Said Skinner: “God gave us the ability and we need to use it.”

Dorinda Atkins, Corliss’s sister, was appreciative of the help. “It’s so wonderful. I was so upset I didn’t know what I was going to do and God sent them.”