After his stroke, one of the things that made Abe Gotzke sad was not being able to volunteer with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) anymore. Or so he thought. Gotzke, 72, of Abbotsford, B.C. suffered the stroke in April. “We were driving up north to...
Anita Jacobsen knows she was lucky. When the White Rock Lake fire swept through Monte Lake, B.C. in July 2021, it spared the house she lives in with her husband, David Newcomb—one of the few in the rural community that wasn’t destroyed or damaged...
When the evacuation order came, Michelle Swanson thought to herself: “Wow—this is really happening!” Michelle, 21, who lives with her father, Ted, 60, in Arnold, didn’t expect the water to flood their home on that mid-November day in 2021....
Asleep on the second floor of their house in Arnold, B.C. Rebecca and Tom Johnstone didn’t know the flood had arrived. “We didn’t hear the siren,” said Johnstone, 55. “A neighbour came to the door and told us to get out.” Johnstone...
When the bridge across the Sumas drainage canal was washed away, Al and Dorothy Balzer knew they were in trouble. The older couple, who live on property beside the canal in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, had watched the water rise in mid-November 2021...
All was quiet on September 6 at 9 a.m. as Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers in Monte Lake, B.C. put down their tools and paused for a moment of silence. They were doing it in memory of Evelyn Greenwood, a long-time volunteer with MDS, who...
“What brought us together was a disaster, a loss, a trauma, something we can never forget.” With those words, Mark Rempel of the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) B.C. Unit began the first of four home dedications on September 10 at the home of...
“We wanted to give our children the experience of serving others.” That’s the reason Peter and Susan Neudorf of Warman, Saskatchewan gave for signing up for the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) family project in Princeton B.C. in August....
“It’s interesting how we always ended up with the right people for the job at hand.” That’s what Philip Wiebe said about the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) family project in Princeton, B.C. this summer. Wiebe, who directed the project with...
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