After a mile-wide tornado tore through southern Kentucky on May 16, Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers from Ohio are engaged in early response, removing damaged trees and debris in the London and Somerset communities. MDS Regional...
Refined by Location:Midwest (Region 2) X
During the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Annual Celebration in Wichita, Kansas, two yearlong MDS volunteers, Jonathon Shirk Snyder and Katie Snyder shared their perspectives on how young people view service—and why, more than ever, how it adds...
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...
Every morning on his way to work, contractor Ken Hollinger passed a black space. He knew two area homes recently burned. Between cancer treatments and work, however, there was never enough time. Besides, he and Suetta, his wife, had a spring...
“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...
Shirley Smith, 83, waits every day to hear the singing. From her living room, where she sits and cares for her 101-year-old husband, Joe Smith, she hears the sounds of MDS volunteers who are repairing their home in Selma, Alabama: hammering, sawing...
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...
Pastor John Grayson lost an argument with God. He really didn’t think he had time to open a shelter to offer unhoused people a hot meal and a warm bed. Wasn’t his church—the Gospel Tabernacle Chapel—doing enough? “The Lord won the argument...
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...
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