Flood damaged wood is transformed in expression of thanks to MDS

John Zuck knows something about transformation. After he and his wife, Connie, had less than two minutes to leave their home in northern Pennsylvania during a flash flood in August 2021, they came back to find the water had all but washed out the foundation at two ends of the house.

“I’d never been through anything like this before,” said Zuck.

Zuck, who enjoys woodworking, also found that most of the wood in his shop had been submerged in muddy floodwater.

A crew of local Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers, joined by masonry students at Alfred State College in New York, helped the Zuck’s repair their home.

Then Zuck set to work in his shop. He painstakingly dried out the wood, and decided to craft a stool—made of six different types of wood—that depicts the MDS logo. With cherry, white oak, white pine, black walnut, basswood, and virgin white pine root, the stool stands as a symbol of the way MDS volunteers help people transform their lives after they have been through a disaster.

The stool will be auctioned off at the upcoming MDS Annual Celebration in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Feb. 10-11.

“I was certainly appreciative of MDS,” said Zuck. “They really helped in a big way. They were a special blessing.”