Final Workday in Midfield?

On Tuesday, January 19, our third formal workday in Midfield / West Birmingham, 11 CFC team members, assisted by Asbury UMC's skid steer "Abel," volunteered to complete the remaining work orders that Hopewell Baptist Church had available for us.  These involved clean-ups on two properties, one of which was started last week and the other which had to await the acquisition of a Right of Entry (ROE) permission form from a neighbor onto whose property the tree our team was working on in a neighboring yard also fell.  But with all the permissions now in place, we divided into two teams and working under sunny skies but in temperatures that only made it up to 36 degrees, we made short order of both jobs.

The 11 members of the Midfield / West Birmingham Day 3 team were (left to right, standing) Bob Thompson, Jason Cannon, Tim Smith, Steve Boyer, Ken Clements, Buddy Williams, Mark Martin; (kneeling) Boyd Martin, Jim Pressler, Alan Weeks and Henry Averyt.

Team member Jason Cannon brought his drone this week and took several aerial videos and still photos of our work sites.  Images from the air certainly do give us a different perspective of the work we've been able to accomplish. This first image shows the property we worked on last week with the 5 large trees.  Note the red circles where the debris was.  (When Jason brings his drone we'll have to get in the habit of taking "before" AND "after" pictures of our work in the future like we often do with our still photos!)

These next images were taken of one of the properties we completed this week.  Can you see Abel in both photos? Abel lifts debris and carries it to the curb, saving the backs of our volunteers and allowing us to cut trees into larger sections which the debris removal trucks can still easily pick up.

In fact, the City of Birmingham was on top of the debris removal clean-up in Midfield / West Birmingham, too.  Here's a photo of one of its grapple trucks picking up the debris our team had cut and Abel had deposited at the curb not 20 minutes earlier!

Following our assignments we returned to Hopewell Baptist Church where the staff there provided a hot lunch for us - Salisbury steak, white rice, gravy, green beans, cheese macaroni, cornbread, coffee, milk and fruit juice - before thanking us for our work following the tornado that struck their community on Christmas Day last month and declaring that they would be in contact with us in the future if they do happen to receive additional work orders and ROEs that might require our assistance to complete.

So for now, our Midfield / West Birmingham first deployment of 2016 is over.  But do stay tuned throughout the rest of 2016 as we send out calls for volunteer participants to assist in future deployments. Stay connected with us as cuttersforchrist.blogspot.com and through these newsletter updates that will arrive in your email box.

In His Service, Bob