Reciprocated blessings: Shuswap host church bolsters MDS response

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 Columbia, church doors, while a steady 68-year-old sipped coffee alongside each one of them, every weekday for the past five months.

The NSCF church elder, Wes Janzen, doesn’t remember any particular introduction to MDS. He grew up in a Mennonite Brethren congregation where he says, “words like MCC and MDS were flowing off tongues all around me.” But he had never volunteered with the disaster relief organization before.

Janzen met Roman Heuft, a long-term MDS volunteer, at a church service after the Bush Creek East Wildfire devastated the North Shuswap in August 2023. Heuft was determining the feasibility of a wildfire response there, as part of an MDS assessment team. Although he lived just across the lake in Blind Bay, British Columbia, Heuft knew no one at NSCF at that time.

He was exploring local options for a volunteer homebase when he struck up a conversation with Janzen and Rich Horner, the church’s board chair, that morning. His inquiry was affirmed on the spot and stamped with the church board’s approval the same week.

Janzen saw a role for himself in the MDS response before any sod was turned. With trauma awareness, experience in trauma response and a personal journey of trauma healing, the Scotch Creek resident felt God touch his heart to help neighbours and friends who had experienced “catastrophic loss.”

He served as a liaison between the church and MDS, and coordinated local, daily volunteers to bolster the response. And dozens of locals took up the invitation — from NSCF church members to Heuft’s congregation, River of Life Community Church, and the wider community of North Shuswap residents.

Janzen sought a good fit for everyone who expressed interest. Some locals volunteered for a three-day stretch on worksites, others donated baking to fuel the steady stream of volunteers or helped MDS cooks with clean-up after breakfast. They carried out small repair and clean-up projects in the communities hit and helped one disaster survivor in her family’s market garden.

“It’s been really nice to be able to give our people the opportunity to practically be the hands and feet of Jesus,” said Scott Ross, NSCF Pastor, who appreciated the ecumenical partnership.

While the MDS response wrapped up in early September, Ross says the organization has left his congregation with a blueprint to continue rebuilding hope in the North Shuswap area.

“A lot of people in our church… have now gained an incredible wealth of experience being on job sites,” he explained. “Moving forward, we have the tools for how [we can] practically meet the needs of people in our community.”

Heuft reciprocated, “It’s probably been the closest partnership I’ve… experienced with an organization we’re staying at. They just gave us their building and that was… an amazing gift. They were wonderful hosts. Every Friday night we turned it back into church and every Sunday night we turned it back into MDS camp, and everybody helped. It was just a very good relationship based on grace and God’s love.”

As for Janzen: “I wish more people would have the privilege of witnessing what I did every single day to see this in action.”

To explore volunteer opportunities with MDS, visit mds.org/ways-to-volunteer.

Nikki Hamm Gwala, MDS Canada Communications