Carrollton Avenue Church of Christ
Keeping Community

Dear Brothers and Sisters of Carrollton,

Well, my "weekly" update is looking more monthly than weekly but I'll try to do better. I suppose I'll be saying "we have lots going on" for quite a while as the work ahead is as great as what we've gotten accomplished.

With the help of Kirk Musselman and his clean-cut brother Russell, the playground looks like new, the front flowerbeds have flowers, and the yards are cleaned up. Through no skill of our own, we were able to take down a huge limb that had broken on the pecan tree between the building and the swing set without damaging either them or ourselves.

Crews of volunteers too numerous to name have gutted the church building and basement of the house and relief supplies are starting to flow into the auditorium in anticipation of helping put lives back together. A parade of insurance adjusters have been over the house and building with a fine tooth comb ("don't call us, we'll call you"), and work has almost finished on rewiring the basement of the house so we can have power turned on there within a week! After power is on, we'll set up the church office in the house and who knows, maybe even a telephone after that.

We have a series of work crews scheduled through spring of next year but, as we anticipated when the initial flurry of media coverage faded, the overall number of bodies has dropped off dramatically. If you are on the list to have your house cleaned up, please hang in there. We're working our way through the list as quickly as we can.

I'm headed back to New Orleans at Thanksgiving with Jenny in tow so she can meet more of Carrollton, see what we've been doing, and gain a fuller sense of the depth of loss suffered by the community. We'll see ya'll in a couple of weeks.

Peace,

Kirk and Jenny