Twenty-nine families in Iron Station, North Carolina, are sleeping better at night. And their daytimes got better, too, after Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers constructed a new 60-foot bridge to carry them in and out of their beloved...
Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers visited Kykotsmovi Village on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona, and helped repair extensive water damage at the Peace Academic Center. After a November 2023 freeze, Lance Polingyouma, superintendent of...
“If I never come back here again, it’s going to be too soon.” Peter Goertzen, who has volunteered at more than 26 different MDS sites, remembers uttering these words back in 2007—the first time he ever served as a long-term volunteer in the...
Her first time volunteering, she stayed five weeks. Hannah Grace Steffen, 23, recalled when her grandmother heard about MDS from a friend—and then her grandmother decided she’d like to cook for volunteers. “But that would have involved...
Shirley Smith, 83, waits every day to hear the singing. From her living room, where she sits and cares for her 101-year-old husband, Joe Smith, she hears the sounds of MDS volunteers who are repairing their home in Selma, Alabama: hammering, sawing...
Jessica Lawrence wasn’t sure how things would come together when she agreed to coordinate volunteers for a Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Alberta Unit response. While she entered the role with administrative experience, it was her first time...
Closing down the longstanding MDS response in Jennings, Louisiana, wasn’t easy. MDS Project Director Rollin Ulrich had the tough job—both logistically and emotionally—of moving MDS volunteers and equipment out of the Jennings Church of Christ...
A swath of devastating and deadly tornadoes walloped communities in the Plains States over the weekend. Authorities report at least four dead in Oklahoma and one in Iowa. At least 40 confirmed tornadoes hammered communities from Texas to Iowa....
Pastor John Grayson lost an argument with God. He really didn’t think he had time to open a shelter to offer unhoused people a hot meal and a warm bed. Wasn’t his church—the Gospel Tabernacle Chapel—doing enough? “The Lord won the argument...
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