Doug Warnock and Jimmy Moore fit boards to the ramp the Helping Hands Ministry built for Myrtle Hudson.

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Doug Warnock and Mike Deese cut boards for the ramp.

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Mike Deese, Steve Harris, Lowery Walker and Doug Warnock fit the ramp to Myrtle Hudson's house in Hamlet so she can use her new scooter to get around.

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The Helping Hands Ministries of the First Baptist Church of Hamlet has helped another senior come closer to mobility around their own home.

Myrtle Hudson is a senior living in Hamlet. She is having difficulty walking, and said her insurance company would cover the expenses of a scooter if she could have a ramp fitted to her house.

Helping Hands Ministries received a ramp request through their church, and after Hudson acquired the materials needed, Jimmy McKeithan and his group of seven handymen went to Hudson’s property.

“She had a fenced-in yard so we had to work around that,” said McKeithan, who has coordinated many projects like this throughout the community. “It took about seven hours.”

McKeithan said members of Helping Hands Ministries limit themselves to simple jobs. The person receiving the ramp pays for the materials and the handymen volunteer their time and labor. McKeithan said many of them have a variety of handyman skills, like carpentry, masonry or other construction-related skills that allow them to work together as a team.

The team has been called to various places during emergencies, McKeithan said, such as Sanford, when a tornado tore through the town, destroying among many buildings the Lowe’s hardware store. The team has been completing requested projects for seven to eight years, said McKeithan. He said the North Carolina Baptist Men, an auxiliary of the Baptist State Convention, has requirements like safety standards the handymen must adhere to when building. Sometimes the Helping Hands partner with men from Pine Grove Baptist Church of Rockingham.

“They did a wonderful job,” said Hudson about her new ramp. “I’m getting my scooter first thing in the morning. The insurance company said I could get it as soon as the ramp was built. Those men knew how to do it all.”

Hudson said the materials were not expensive, less than $200, and the handymen did all the rest.

The Helping Hands Ministries will be building another ramp, on Leak Street in Rockingham, as its next project.

— Staff Writer Dawn M. Kurry can be reached at 910-997-3111, ext. 15, or by email at dkurry@heartlandpublications.com.