It was 3 a.m., in the early months of COVID. The Rev. Shannon Marie Berry sat on her stoop. Fremont, North Carolina, with a population of about 1,200, was quiet. Berry was alone and fixated on the bell tower of Fremont United Methodist Church across the street. She’d been hardly sleeping. Her Apple Watch was collecting alarming heart rate data. And she was staring at the church she was responsible for leading, worn out and defeated.
FREMONT — A handful of families from the town of Fremont received some early Christmas gifts thanks to a long-running community outreach effort held in the small northern Wayne County