Fifteen years ago, if there were three or four major disasters for Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) to respond to, that was considered a very busy year. Today, that number has “tripled or even quadrupled” says executive director Kevin King. “We...
Photos by Mary Cottingham | for STC The Coastal Bend Disaster Recovery Group (CBDRG), along with its many partners, broke ground on “Tierra de Esperanza” (Land of Hope) on Sept. 23. Twenty-three new homes will soon be built on this 3...
Two homes in the mountains of West Virginia are nearly ready for occupancy, four years after floodwaters decimated communities and upended lives there. MDS volunteers built the 1,000-foot modular homes by working inside a warehouse tucked in the...
This summer, 46 congregations in Canada received money from the MDS Canada Spirit of MDS Fund to help them serve their communities during the pandemic. Funds were used for things like food, rent, personal protective equipment, to help seniors...
As Lawrence Hurst was talking to family members who farm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he learned some of them had such large crops of silage they weren’t sure what to do with the extra. At the same time, he knew there were small farmers only a few...
Susan Garwick Slagle’s earliest memory of sewing dates back to when she was a little girl. That’s when the resident of Holmes County, Ohio learned to use a treadle to put rags together for her grandmother, who then used them to braid rugs. Over...
For the Scott St. Mennonite Brethren Church in St. Catharines, Ont., money from the MDS Canada Spirit of MDS Fund was “a great encouragement to our congregation and a catalyst for ministry,” says pastor Rob Patterson. “It made us feel that we...
A crew from JZ Engineering—designers of the driveway bridges MDS volunteers have been building for several years in West Virginia—volunteered in July to build a bridge in Pocahontas County. Johann Zimmermann, principal engineer, and his employees...
A schoolteacher and his family in Bessemer City, North Carolina, are safely in a newly repaired home thanks to volunteers coordinated by the North Carolina Unit of Mennonite Disaster Service. After a windstorm ripped part of the roof off the home,...
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