In the early hours of a quiet morning, I was weighed down with concern for my son, Sean, who lives in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. Hurricane Helene had swept through the area, causing widespread damage — uprooting trees and...
Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) assessment teams and early response crews are on the ground in western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept. 27. Reporting from western North Carolina just outside of...
Uh-oh: One day, back in 2022, Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) was running low on wall hangings—a treasured gift from MDS to homeowners given during home dedications. So, Becky Koller got the word out quickly. “I went through my email list of...
“I see [MDS] as an orchestra led by God, where all the musicians are looking at God for the next cue,” reflected Isabelle Labelle, a wildfire survivor, at the closing celebration of the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) Shuswap Response. “What...
Over the past two summers, 472 Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers have made the Red Lake Nation their home. They repaired 58 homes on the reservation, equaling 17,285 volunteer hours. “The Creator brought you to us,” said...
Dennis Moninger will never forget Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS). In June 2024, he wrote an email to MDS that read, in part: “You are a force for good.” He went on to describe how his son and daughter have now both graduated from college...
It’s 7:06 on a brisk August morning and Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers are lined up for a hearty buffet breakfast at North Shuswap Christian Fellowship (NSCF). Approximately 400 MDS volunteers came through the Scotch Creek, British...
Harry Davis remembers the day water rushed over the road, like a dam breaking upstream from his house. It was July 10, 2023, and a devastating flood hit central Vermont. Davis sheltered in place as his cellar and the main floor of his house flooded....
Sixty-eight trucks?! Fifty-one cargo trailers?! And that’s only a small part of the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) fleet, which collectively clocks more than 600,000 miles to respond to disasters in a single year. Who keeps all those...
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