There were about 80 people here yesterday clearing trees in Mandeville. 

Our thanks this week to the folks from Centerville Christian Church (Indiana), Indian Hills Christian Church (Danville, KY), Wheatland Christian Church (Indiana), Freelandville Christian Church (Indiana) and I think there are some from Bloomington or Bloomfield, Indiana.

The Centerville church brought with them a new washer and dryer for the Mandeville Church. Thanks. We really needed that! With all those sweaty, dirty clothes the machines are really getting a workout.

I must also give thanks for the cooks from Centerville. They have performed superbly all week feeding the masses and they will certainly be missed.

Also thanks to the Whitewater Crossing Christian Church in Cincinnati, we now have a much needed copy machine!

And we are supposed to receive today an icemaker! The Dept. of Agriculture has been making daily ice deliveries to the church. We thank one of the local friends of our Mandeville church for arranging the ice deliveries. It was strange to see the army trucks and soldiers delivering it to the building yesterday.

A special word of thanks to William Waters, minister at the Fifth Avenue Church of Christ in Williamson, West Virginia. He is an expert tree cutter and he has been our consultant and chief advisor for difficult situations. Yesterday I watched him take a hazardously and precariously perched pine tree from its lofty resting place and inch it down slowly and set it in the corner of a fenced backyard. It was really a work of art and very well done. Thank you William!

And a special thank you to Bob Lanyon from Carthage Missouri. He was here our first week of recovery and has returned for two more weeks. I challenge any of you young bucks out there to keep up with him!

There seems to be and endless number of large trees to remove from properties. They are very large and require man-sized chain saws and tractors or bobcats to pull to the curbs for pickup. We are struggling to keep ahead of our work crews, but what works well is going into the neighborhoods and asking people if they need help and watching their response when they are told it's free. There are some large acreages where you could spend the next year cutting trees, but we are trying to just get the ones near homes and driveways.