For The Record

Submit birth, marriage and obituary records online.

Personal Ads

Meet new friends today!

Advertising

Put your message in front of 19,000 readers.

PDF documents on this site require the free Adobe Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

2009-03-03 issue:

MDS faces year full of natural disasters

300 gather to celebrate Mennonite Disaster Service’s work at All-Unit Meeting.

by Paul Schrag for Meetinghouse

Print Article

In Mennonite Disaster Service’s busiest winter, Charles Duplessis’ three-year wait is almost over. The Baptist pastor is about to move into what he calls “a house built on love.” He means the love of MDS volunteers. Duplessis says he’s met hundreds of them. They’ve built Duplessis a house to replace the one that was swept away when a wall of water broke through a levee and surged through New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward during Hurricane Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005.

Duplessis—who lost not only his house but also the meeting place of his church, Mount Nebo Bible Baptist, when the levee broke—gave a testimony during the annual MDS All-Unit Meeting Feb. 13-14 at Spring Hill Baptist Church in Mobile.

More than 300 MDS leaders and volunteers from the United States and Canada gathered to celebrate and support an organization that is touching more lives than ever. With a record number of 14 binational projects under way this winter, MDS activity has grown to a high point that its leaders hope to keep building on. Though contributions and grants to MDS increased by $584,000 in 2008, the year wasn’t without disappointments.

“Hurricane Ike was a wake-up call, because it showed that if you don’t get the media attention, then MDS is impacted,” said Kevin King, executive director. Donations were lower than hoped for after the September storm, and MDS was not able to respond to the extent King would have liked.

Yet 2008 was a big year for MDS. More than 4,800 people volunteered 26,316 days to binational projects. That number doesn’t include the countless people who responded to local disasters in their own regions.

It was an unusually active year for natural disasters. The hurricane season was one of the worst in history. For the first time, six consecutive named storms made U.S. landfall.

There were 500 more tornadoes in 2008 than in 2007, King said. MDS volunteers responded to floods in Manitoba and wildfires in California.

In Iowa, “2008 will never be forgotten,” said  Lynn Troyer of Wellman, Iowa. Summer flooding turned 86 of the state’s 99 counties into disaster areas.

MDS’s biggest binational projects continued on the Gulf Coast—from Mobile to southeast Texas—where recovery from 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita continues. MDS spent more than $1.3 million at 11 Gulf Coast locations last year.

Jerry Klassen, disaster response coordinator, led a workshop on the new Partnership Home Program. In this program, MDS connects congregations with clients in distant places for home-building projects. Church groups can travel to the construction site, or they can build a panel house close to home, ship it in pieces to the site and complete it there.

King reported that MDS has purchased property for a new office and warehouse building in Lititz, Pa. About $1.3 million has been raised toward the $3 million capital campaign goal. The MDS board of directors reaffirmed its support for the project before the All-Unit Meeting.

Reader Comments

Add Comments