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...
After serving with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) in Monte Lake, B.C., Sofia Epp won’t see news about fires or floods the same way. “Hearing stories from the homeowners personalizes it,” she said. “It’s been an eye-opening experience.”...
Clarence Kruschel knows exactly what wildfire survivors in Monte Lake, B.C. are going through. It was 19 years ago when Kruschel, 74, lost his own home to the Okanagan Mountain Park firestorm, which destroyed 239 houses in Kelowna, B.C. Kruschel,...
People come to Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) as volunteers in different ways—they hear about it at church, visit the MDS website, learn about it on social media, or are invited by a friend. For Rudy Martens of Vancouver, it was because of a...
It’s the things she lost to the fire that still hits hard for Michelle Maisonneuve. “I keep remembering all the things I lost, the things I thought I’d keep the rest of my life, my books and photos,” she said of what the 2021 wildfire in...
For Joanne Caldwell, Vice-President of the Westwold, B.C. Community Hall, there was no question about letting Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) use the hall for free as its hub of operations for house building in nearby Monte Lake. “It’s amazing...
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