Count your many blessings

By Rachel Horst

Several weeks before we left for our assignment in Merced, California, we had a realization. Between state and national MDS projects, this would be our 60th assignment!

Don’s first time serving with MDS was helping clean up after the Big Thompson Canyon Flood in 1976.  When the time came for the group he had traveled with to return home, the director asked him to stay on to give continuity to the contacts that had been made.  It was a tough decision: self employed, he had flexibility in his schedule. But he also had a wife and three-year-old daughter at home. We worked it out. Don stayed to help and Liz and I drove to Colorado to spend a week with him in Estes Park. That flash flood killed 144 people and brought our family into the world of service.

Over the years, inspiration came in other ways.  My older brother, Nevin Brubaker, volunteered for many years with MDS; his model of service made an impact on us. In 2011, Russ Gaedert asked us to serve with the Hesston College Disaster Management students in Gulfport, Mississippi. The decision was easy to make. While we were still working, summers fit both of our schedules nicely.  We accompanied students on their practicum field assignments for five years. Our transition to retirement was for both of us to serve with MDS multiple times a year. The projects we’ve helped on and relationships we have formed have been fulfilling and meaningful.

A desire dear to our hearts is passing the vision of serving others on to the younger generations. What a delight it was when our daughter’s 23-year-old son, Isaiah, told us that he and our son, Andrew, made plans to come serve with us in Merced for a week!  Having three generations on an MDS site together is one of the best blessings one could ask for.  Thank you, Isaiah and Andrew, for this beautiful and meaningful gift of giving forward.

Rachel and Don Horst live in Newton, Kansas.