NAPLES — Volunteers are urged to help find 6-year-old Adji Desir, the Immokalee boy who went missing nearly one week ago.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office will hand out fliers to volunteers from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Immokalee Community Park, 321 N. 1st St. They'll be asked to distribute the fliers in their communities to help find Adji.

Thursday, the soft and sometimes unsteady voice of the child's mother spoke of an unimaginable despair.

“I feel like my life is almost over,” said Marie Neida, 36, in Creole during a press conference Thursday.

Six-year-old Adji went missing Saturday from his grandmother’s home at Farm Worker Village in Immokalee.

And on Thursday, there was still no sign of the developmentally disabled boy, who police say has the mental capacity of a 2-year-old.

With help from Collier County Sheriff’s Office translator Nymphgamey Oboute, Adji’s mother and stepfather gave an update on their family’s status and how they’re all holding up.

“I see that the community is doing a good job because they are helping us find Adji,” said the boy’s stepfather, Antal Elant, 41, in Creole. “The police officers are not sleeping, they’re doing a good service. That’s why I have hope that they will find Adji.”

Elant said faith continues to give the family strength.

“We have a God in heaven who is helping us search for him too,” said Elant. “We are not going to lose faith, because we know we are going to find him.”

Neida agreed.

“God will give him back to me,” Neida said. “I think he will come home.”

Adji’s disappearance has taken a toll on the family, Elant said.

Especially on Neida — this is the longest she’s ever been apart from her only child.

“She can’t even sleep. Every time she tries to lie down she remembers Adji and she gets up,” said Elant.

The family is also dealing with the stream of calls from extended family and friends asking for updates.

Both Elant and Neida said they were grateful for the outpouring of support.

“I want to tell everyone thank you,” said Neida. “Because I see that everyone is my family in this country.”

Law enforcement officials will continue to look for Adji today.

“As of yesterday, we had gone 12 square miles and we’re expanding another 4 square miles in all directions today,” said Collier County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karie Partington during a press conference.

Adji’s story will air on America’s Most Wanted on Saturday, Partington said.

Though Sheriff’s Office officials believe the number of agents would be slightly scaled back, roughly 300 law enforcement officials — 100 of which are Collier County deputies — are expected to continue the search Friday, with boats and airboats joining the effort, Partington said.

“The search for Adji has been just phenomenal,” said incident commander Lt. Tom Smith, in an interview Thursday. “We started off with 80 officers or so the first night. It jumped to 150 the next of couple of nights and yesterday we had over 300 officers here searching. And today it was nearly the same.”

Sheriff’s officials said more than 40 law enforcement and emergency response agencies have given their time and manpower.

“We’ve been tremendously lucky,” said Smith.

Concerning the expanded search, which included Immokalee’s Lake Trafford, Smith said the lake’s shoreline had been on the investigators’ radar.

“It is a location that if you are going to search this community for a missing person or a missing child, that would be someplace that you would have to cover as a natural progression of the investigation,” said Smith.

In addition to law enforcement from Collier County, Lee County, Orange County and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission using boats and airboats, the Tampa Search and Rescue Team brought down an amphibious vehicle with underwater sonar and cameras to help scan the lake.

Smith also confirmed that investigators had cleared through the 15 to 20 truckloads of trash that had been set aside to search for any clues that might lead to Adji.

“They went through probably 60 tons of trash at the transfer station,” said Smith. “That refuse has been cleared and it has been disposed of.”

Meanwhile, the state Department of Children and Families has become involved in the case.

“We’ve been working with the Sheriff’s Office since the beginning,” said DCF spokeswoman Erin Gillespie, adding that the agency has had no prior involvement with any of Adji’s family members.

“Right now, law enforcement has the lead on the whole case,” she said. “Depending on the outcome, we could be more involved. We’re just waiting and hoping for the best. It’s a sad case.”

Partington said the cost of the search is impossible to calculate at this point.

By law, all the law enforcement officers who participated in the search had to be on the clock, she said.

The FBI has been assisting with the search since it started but the Sheriff’s Office is the lead agency on the case, Partington said.

The Sheriff’s Office does plan for emergencies, but searches of this magnitude are difficult to plan for.

“It’s like a 100-year storm,” Partington said. “It’s just something you have to cope with. We do have money, but this is an extraordinary event.”

Asked how the agents keep the morale up, when so many people question if Adji is still alive, Smith said that it comes with the job.

“You always train for the things that you don’t want to happen. We didn’t want this to happen, but we’re trained for it, we’re prepared for it ... we know what our mission is — our mission is to bring Adji home and we intend to do so,” Smith said. “Whether or not we bring him home immediately, a few days later, a month later or a year later, we are going to finish this case.”

Smith said people have asked how long it would take for the Sheriff’s Office to make Adji’s case a “cold case.”

He said that wouldn’t happen.

“Cold case is a TV term, this case will always be an open case,” said Smith. “We will always search for Adji.”

Staff writers Ryan Mills and Aisling Swift contributed to this report.

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office is asking for volunteers to help in the search for 6-year-old Adji Desir. From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, citizen volunteers are asked to go to Immokalee Community Park, 321 N. 1st St.

Volunteers will be asked to distribute the fliers with Adji’s information in their own communities or locations of their choice.

Representatives familiar with Collier, Lee and Hendry counties will be on hand to suggest possible locations and offer assistance. Maps of all three counties will be on display. Volunteers are asked to bring identification.

Timeline of events in the search for Adji:

Saturday

5 p.m. — Family members realize 6-year-old Adji Desir is missing from his grandmother’s Farm Worker Village home at 814 Grace St., Immokalee. Adji was wearing blue shorts and a blue T-shirt with yellow stripes when he disappeared.

7 p.m. — Family members call Collier County Sheriff’s Office after a 2-hour search.

7:42 p.m. — Deputies respond, begin searching Farm Worker Village and surrounding woods with bloodhounds, ATVs, on horseback, and in a helicopter. The first neighborhood canvass is conducted.

Sunday

8 a.m. — Command post implemented in Farm Worker Village. Lt. Thomas B. Smith named incident commander. More than 150 officers conduct ground search within a quarter mile of Farm Worker Village.

4 p.m. — Adji’s mother, grandmother and stepfather speak to media.

6 p.m. — Search reined in for the night. Sheriff’s Office’s helicopter continues search using infrared technology.

Monday

8 a.m. — Search expanded to 4-square mile perimeter, assisted by hundreds of law enforcement officers from across South Florida.

2 p.m. - 5 p.m. — Community volunteers begin canvassing Immokalee, handing out fliers with Adji’s photo, which are printed in English, Spanish and Creole.

6 p.m. — Search again reined in for the night. Seminole Police helicopter continues search from the sky.

8:45 p.m. — Case makes national news when Lt. Smith appears on Nancy Grace program on CNN Headline News.

Tuesday

8 a.m. — Search perimeter expands to 12 miles.

10 a.m. - Noon — Community volunteers again called out to pass out fliers door-to-door.

3 p.m. — Collier County Sheriff’s Office clears family members as suspects in Adji’s disappearance, including his biological father, who remains in Haiti.

8:45 p.m. — Smith appears again on CNN, says investigation is pointing more towards “someone being responsible for removing (Adji) from the village.”

Wednesday

8 a.m. — Search perimeter remains at 12 miles. Investigators conduct a comprehensive neighborhood canvass, contacting every resident in Farm Worker Village.

2 p.m. — Collier Sheriff Kevin Rambosk addresses media, presenting an overview of steps taken to date.

4 p.m. — Investigators begin combing through all the garbage collected over the week in Immokalee.

5 p.m. — Local businessman Del Ackerman offers $3,000 reward for Adji’s safe return, in addition to $2,500 offered by Collier County Housing Authority and $1,000 offered by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers.

Thursday

8 a.m. — Search perimeter expands to 16 miles. Investigators conduct a comprehensive search of Lake Trafford and Immokalee.

2 p.m. — Adji’s mother and stepfather give an update on their family’s status and how they’re all holding up.

5 p.m. — Collier County Lt. Tom Smith, the incident commander, addresses media, presenting an overview of the day’s search