March 20, 2008
 
Hello FCTR Members,
 
          I hope that you are doing well and your horses are fine.  We are doing well, however, I write this letter to you with a heavy heart.

          I am sure you have heard of the massive flood that lay waste to much of west Lewis County in early December of 2007.  This flood was like nothing ever seen before.  It destroyed hundreds of homes and farms from Willapa Hills to the Chehalis Valley.

          Unfortunately, in the course of the flood our Club ride site and much of our trail was completely destroyed.  In part because of this and other events we have made the hard decision to dissolve the organization of Fellowship of Christian Trail-riders.

          We have given up our non-profit status with the State of Washington and this letter will make the action official with you, our membership.

          I will share with you some of the issues we were faced with.  The Chehalis River swept thousands of trees down stream, wiping out everything in its path.  Several bridges were taken down; mudslides were massive and beyond belief.  Every little side creek and stream became violent as they flowed toward the river.  At the Elk Creek Rd Bridge, at our ride site, logs jammed into a massive pile, you couldn’t see the bridge.  It was broken and cracked but stayed up. 

          This log jam created a lake behind it.  The water was so deep it completely covered our white van.  It ruined almost everything in the van.  The van itself is a total loss.  The registration booth and storage building was swept down stream.  With it went all of its contents.  I recovered 27 of our 165 green chairs two weeks after the flood when the mud allowed me to walk to the van on top of the sticker bushes.  It took 2 ½ hours to dig them out of the mud. 

          In all we lost roughly $2,200.00 value.  Some time later we hiked to the van and found that vandals had shot out the windows, tires and the headlights.  All 27 chairs that I had retrieved were gone. 

          The mud is still 16” to 22” deep. The entire field is covered with this mud as well as logs. One of the landowners cleaned the side road with his bulldozer so we could drive over the hill to our trail.  However, due to two landslides on the downside you cannot drive to the meadows.  It would take extensive work just to rebuild the road.

          As for our trail it took it hard!  Some parts of it are completely gone.  There are countless mudslides and, of course, the usual winter blow downs, with dozens of trees to clean up.  More work than we can do or even would want to attempt to do or that funds could afford. 

          Furthermore, this is our oldest son, Trevor’s senior year at WF West High School in Chehalis.  He has not had much of a dad in the spring and summer of the past eight years because I dedicated hundreds of hours working and then maintaining the horse trails.  With no club, I can focus on Trevor’s last year with us and his graduation and all it involves.  I am looking forward to this, especially in light of him going off to play college football at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon and thus will be leaving home in early August.

          Our younger son, Drew, the one who rides with me and trains horses has been my #1 trail worker for years.  He has been priceless!!  But he would have been unable to help me at all on the trail work this year because he is recovering from major shoulder surgery.  Without him I could not or would not even try to do it.

           We were hoping to be able to pull the club out of debt in the next couple of years with the new club format we proposed at the end of last year but as life goes and things have happened we are left with a debt that we are now personally responsible for.  We do have some items of FCTR we should be able to sell or keep in lieu of payment but if any of you feel you could help with this in anyway we would be very grateful (see below).  

          It has been a wonderful eight years and we really believe God has touched many lives through FCTR, with your help.  We love all of you and will miss you very much.  I really mean this.  It hurts to say good-bye to friends that you’ve become so close to during the riding season.  I believe that all of you understand and for this I am very thankful.

          We pray always for you and hope you always know you can call us at   anytime for anything.  We hope we showed the love of Christ to you and you know a part of Jesus from us.  That really is what FCTR was about.  We hope to see you at other horse functions during the coming years. God Bless you all and goodbye!!!

In His Service,
 
Jerry T. Elliott
President, FCTR