Heat and humidity. Fresh shrimp. Devastation. Trust. Stagnant smells. Blessings. A rollercoaster of memories rolled out from Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers who responded to Hurricane Katrina 20 years ago. During the aftermath of the...
Refined by Location:Mississippi & Louisiana X
As they climbed a 205-step wooden trail staircase on Mackinaw Island, Twila and Leonard Hochstedler talked about why they love the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) RV Program. The both have a sense of adventure. From Kalona, Iowa, the couple has been...
As Hurricane Katrina approached, Blanca Mackay and her husband, Mario, left New Orleans for Houston, Texas. “We took one of our cars and followed our son and his wife,” Blanca remembered. “We stayed in Houston almost a month. Everything in New...
David Harms lived in Houston, Texas, during his first year after college, working in investment banking. From Houston he watched Katrina bear down in the Gulf. “A few years before Katrina,” David said, “I met a Tulane student who told me...
Sixty-eight trucks?! Fifty-one cargo trailers?! And that’s only a small part of the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) fleet, which collectively clocks more than 600,000 miles to respond to disasters in a single year. Who keeps all those...
“If I never come back here again, it’s going to be too soon.” Peter Goertzen, who has volunteered at more than 26 different MDS sites, remembers uttering these words back in 2007—the first time he ever served as a long-term volunteer in the...
Closing down the longstanding MDS response in Jennings, Louisiana, wasn’t easy. MDS Project Director Rollin Ulrich had the tough job—both logistically and emotionally—of moving MDS volunteers and equipment out of the Jennings Church of Christ...
The wall of signatures and blessings. Freida Platt’s cooking. Meals, jokes, and prayers with Pastor Roy Platt, at the Jennings Church of Christ. All the ways the church and the whole community of Jennings, Louisiana, opened their hearts to MDS...
Phil Helmuth was beating the bushes to find a reasonably-priced electrician. It was early 2023, when MDS was rebuilding and repairing homes in the wake of hurricanes Laura and Delta in southwest Louisiana, Helmuth, an MDS project coordinator,...
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