To this day, Janine Ungvarsky gets anxious when she hears heavy rainfall. She was just a young girl in 1972 when Hurricane Agnes tore through eastern Pennsylvania and the raging Susquehanna River devastated the Wyoming Valley. It brought three-and-a-half feet of water into the second floor of her family's home.

"Still, when I hear the heavy rain, I feel myself tense up," says Ungvarsky.

In 2011, when her community again was ravaged by flooding, she knew she had to help. Fortunately, she wasn't alone.

"The 2011 flood damaged about a third of our borough," she says. "Our church (Trinity Episcopal Church, West Pittston) was a block away from the flood in two different directions. Nearby buildings had water that backed up from the sewers. We knew we were extremely fortunate that we had not been affected, and we knew we had parishioners who needed help."

The question was how to give it.

"We kind of floundered at the beginning," Ungvarsky said. "But we figured out that our charism might be that we would be there for the long term, that we were going to find ways to keep helping."