June 17 Update (reposted)

We apologize that the slide presentation at Annual Conference included photos from so few communities that suffered flooding or tornadoes. Several weeks ago, we had a short window to get a joint TN/Memphis Conference presentation together and mostly only had photos on hand from one day we had a photographer visit Bellevue, West Nashville, and Carthage where we knew we had teams working. Before we publish for download, we'll be redoing the presentation to reflect that communities large and small that suffered in 28 counties, across all 7 districts. We were pleased to have UMCOR's Domestic Response head, Tom Hazelwood and UMCOR Consultant, Christy Smith to join us at Annual Conference this week.

Annual Conference absorbed a LOT of everyone's time this week, but we did still manage to coordinate a few teams and attend several Long Term Recovery meetings. A new entry to our team list is a Spiritual/Emotional Care team from N.C. The 2 person team will be with us a few weeks, visiting pastors and communities that have experienced trauma from the disaster or as a volunteer/professional serving survivors.

We still have cleanup/mold spraying in Antioch, North Nashville, and Cheatham Co., though they and many other communities are beginning to focus on getting long term recovery groups together to help facilitate rebuilding as it ramps up as we get farther into the summer. We don't have as many teams the next couple of weeks, so we're going to take this time to revise our registration process and establish some policies related to youth on teams, team size, etc. We'll also be putting together a registration packet with all of the many forms UMVIM rebuild teams should be accustomed to filling out.