Region I Annual Meeting 

The Region I Annual Meeting will be held on October 9-10 at Glade Mennonite Church, Accident, MD. For more information, download this file:

Meeting Information

MDS Work in New Iberia Mends Houses and Relationships - Jule 18, 2009

New York Unit builds a Partnership Home House

On April 28, Mennonite Disaster Service volunteers from northern New York arrived in New Iberia, La., and started work the next day building a new house in Baldwin, La. for Marie L. Brown. The Brown house was destroyed by Hurricane Gustav when an oak tree fell along the length of the home.

In just a matter of four weeks, the new house was completely built, with only minor tasks left to do at the request of the home owner.

Different crews worked on the house every week, but all came from the MDS New York unit, and from northern New York. Most of them came from Lewis County Mennonite churches.

The homeowner did have some finances for material, but did not have anything for labor; MDS provided free labor to build the house.

“This is a great program,” Brown said during the build. “This is just like family.”

The Brown home is just one of four houses built this year by MDS as part of its Partnership Home Program (PHP), where church groups can essentially adopt a family in need of a house, and then either build the house on site, or built much of it away from the site, perhaps in a church parking lot, and take it down in parts to complete the build on site.

MDS Project Director and New York Unit Chair, Melvin Roes added that this new build “went so fast because most of the people we had down there are in construction. I’d say it was basically ‘Get down there; get it done, and get out!’”

Even so, in the weeks the teams worked in New Iberia strong relationships were built, as well as a house. Roes tells many stories about how their work helped to mend long-time rifts and strained relationship with neighbors, and within Brown’s own family.

“There was a next door neighbor who had a history with Marie.” So it was a stretch when Roes needed power to work on Brown’s house, as the temporary power they had planned on didn’t pan out. Roes offered to fix the neighbor’s carport, which had been damaged by Hurricane Rita, in exchange for power. The neighbor somehow still expected to pay for the fixing of her carport, but Roes insisted the repairs be for free, and Carl Zehr, construction manager for the New Iberia project, later even gave her money for power they used.

“Well, after a break one day, this neighbor came to me and asked me, ‘Would you pray for me?’ I said sure. And we prayed for her son” who was in trouble with the law. “And I said we’ll continue to pray.”

“There were lots of mending of relations,” as well as mending of houses and carports.

Zehr said, “You don’t know where God is leading in all of this!”