After volunteering for Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) for nearly 17 years, this year Cheryl Mast is thankful to be on the receiving end. Mast coordinates outdoor education programs for the 360-acre Amigo Centre in southern Michigan, which offers...
The sixth grader tightened the grip on her purse as I approached. The purse was made of pink overlapping sequins. At its top, a unicorn’s horn emerged. A strap secured it around her neck. Amongst this group of older white men, it provided...
Growing up in a farm family, Randy Short spent a week serving with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) in Kentucky after his senior year of high school. After that, he served with MDS each winter for three or four months. “After we were married, it...
Michael Bering paused in the shade on his back patio in LaPlace, Louisiana, chatting for a few minutes with his brother, Edward, who has come by to lend him some moral support as he copes with the havoc Hurricane Ida wreaked on his home. Michael’s...
Sixty-seven-year-old Pamela Haskin was sweeping, cleaning, and sweating up a storm inside a hurricane-damaged home in LaPlace, Louisiana. She’d traveled from her home in western Pennsylvania several days before, but still seemed a little surprised...
Philip Hirtle pulled moldy drywall, soggy carpet and bedraggled belongings out of his mother-in-law’s home, sweating in the early October Louisiana Gulf Coast heat, hauling pickup truckload after truckload to the growing pile at end of the long,...
As power continues to come back in Louisiana, many residents are returning to survey severe flood damage from Hurricane Ida. Many other states are also reeling from deadly tornadoes and flooding unleashed by Ida’s remnants as the storm cut a wide...
As communities from Tennessee and North Carolina up through northeast Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York cope with the aftermath of flooding caused by Tropical Storm Henri on August 21-22, Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) has been communicating...
Photo by Joanne Murray. * By Joanne Murray “Our roof was blown off as we huddled in the corner of our porch from six in the morning until nine at night. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before.” That’s how Shirley Kent vividly...
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