Retired U.S. Army General Joe Orr can run just about any operation with precision. This includes his role of co-coordinator at Homes and Hope for Kentucky, a nonprofit assisting with long-term tornado recovery in Mayfield and the surrounding Graves...
Joni Killius will have a floor in time for Thanksgiving. She can set a table for her five kids, ages 6, 8, 10, 12, and 19. Her home, severely damaged by Hurricane Ian in September 2022, is still not fully repaired, but MDS volunteers have made...
It was a week before the project closed at the end of September at the Red Lake First Nation in northern Minnesota, and Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers were in a hurry to get the last few houses finished before closing for the winter. MDS...
For Abe Wiebe of Winkler, Manitoba, service with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) in Cape Breton was a way to honour his father. “My dad was a servant of the Lord all his life,” he said of his father, also named Abe. The senior Wiebe was a...
“It’s so good to have the light again.” That’s what Polly Lussier of the Red Lake Nation in northern Minnesota said about getting windows back in her house with help from Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers. Lussier’s house was...
What’s early response? Shirk: Early response, which begins when search-and-rescue is complete, can be removing trees, tarping houses, or mucking out houses after a flood. If a roof is partially blown off, we may tarp that roof to mitigate...
Eddie Gillespie can finally rest. For weeks—which stretched into months—Eddie, his wife Nicole, and his two children, Jacob and Edward, tried to sleep on the second floor of a house so flood-damaged it almost became a deathtrap. Their...
Elisa Humphreys was sitting on her couch in her home in Carstairs, Alberta when she got the emergency alert about the tornado. It was July 1 and Humphreys, 63, who manages Clothing for a Cause—a ministry that recycles clothing and household...
By Matt Troyer-Miller An old grocery store near Red Lake, Minnesota, has been transformed into a “marketplace” of MDS service. On Sept. 5, the Red Lake Nation held an open house at the old store—now the Red Lake MDS volunteer...
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