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Hesston, Kansas
Hammer rings hope for MDS’s future


Agency celebrates 50 years of service

When 25-year-old Nathan Koslowsky hit a hammer on metal at the 50th anniversary celebration of Mennonite Disaster Service, he rang hope into the hearts of his elders that the young are catching the vision to serve.

Koslowsky and his wife Danielle, the youngest project directors for MDS, serve in a tornado-ravaged part of Little Rock, Ark. They spoke at MDS 2000 on June 2-4 at Hesston College.

Nathan and Danielle Koslowsky (left), the youngest project directors for Mennonite Disaster Service, meet Howard Beck and Anna Ruth, members of the Sunday school classes that founded MDS in 1950.

About 820 registrants helped mark five decades of inter-Mennonite response to disaster with practical help and loving hope in Christ.

Some members from the two Sunday school classes who birthed the vision for Mennonite Service Organization in 1950 listened to the Koslowskys June 3. The couple thanked their elders for modeling how to serve and building an organization in which to serve.

Nathan hit the hammer on a railing in Yost Center and said that 2,000 years ago a hammer drove nails through “the wrists and ankles of our Saviour, bringing hope.”

He struck again: “Fifty years ago, a new hammer was picked up, bringing hope to survivors of disasters.”

The sound echoed a third time: “Today, generations of the future take the hammer from tired hands and carry on the vision, pounding away at the homelessness and lostness in the world today.”

Howard and Anna Ruth Beck of Hesston were part of the Sunday school classes from the former Pennsylvania Mennonite Church (now Whitestone in Hesston) and Hesston Mennonite Church who held a summer picnic in Harvey County Park to discuss organizing a disaster service.

Some participants in Civilian Public Service during World War II wanted an avenue for disaster response, Anna Ruth said. But they never envisioned it would eventually spark an inter-Mennonite, continent-wide agency. “In our wildest thoughts we never thought it (MDS) would grow to such large proportions,” she said. “We were just trying to be faithful. I don’t think we gave it a lot of thought. We just did what we felt we could do and left the results to the Lord.”

The Becks remember MSO’s first project in 1951 when 30-plus Mennonites from several churches in the Hesston area responded to a flood in Wichita. They did sandbagging in neighbourhoods threatened by the Little Arkansas River. The entire community was involved, explains Anna Ruth. “We left our children with their grandparents while the women went to take sandwiches and drinks to the men at night.”

MDS 2000 included large-group sessions in Yost Center on Friday and Saturday. Keynote speakers, MDS regional representatives, recipients of disaster relief and representatives of other groups spoke.

Groups included the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Friends Disaster Service, Church World Service and Christian Reformed World Relief Committee.

Weekend activities included workshops, a Friday evening banquet in Hutchinson, Kan., tours, reunions, and an outdoor worship service and picnic on Sunday. The service included a report about a youth service project at Morning Star Ranch near Florence, Kan., and singing by the Amish Mennonite Kansas Youth Chorus.

People discussed how MDS could best pass the hammer of service onto the next generation. The 21st century is vastly different from the simple farm communities of the 1950s, many said. Advanced technology has brought new possibilities, but a modern lifestyle has brought new challenges.

“We are facing a challenging transition,” said C. Nelson Hostetter, MDS’s first full-time executive coordinator 1971-86. “We are moving to the need for more organization and structure to be able to respond to today’s complex disaster scene.”

The Koslowskys brought MDS founders and leaders hope that the young will continue to answer the call to serve. They grew up in Winnipeg. Nathan’s home church is River East MB Church. Danielle grew up in a non-practising Roman Catholic home.

Danielle said, “In the world I grew up in, I never had to lift a finger to help anyone. I wasn’t taught to serve others, but to take care of myself. But I thank the original MDS for building an organization that has given me the opportunity [to serve].”

FEMA director James Lee Witt holds a copy of the MDS history book, The Hammer Rings Hope.

Lives touched

During MDS’s 50th anniversary celebration, people shared how MDS volunteers have rebuilt homes, mended emotions, healed lives and made victors out of victims – in Christ’s name. Many testimonies of lives touched by MDS volunteers fill a new book, The Hammer Rings Hope, by former MDS executive coordinator Lowell Detweiler.

Hezekiah Stewart, pastor of Mount Nebo African Methodist Episcopal Church in College Station, Ark., spoke of how volunteers from Region III broke through the barriers of racism after a March 1997 tornado ripped through his community. The storm left people dazed as they pieced through the shredded bits of their homes.

“One of the most amazing memories I have is watching Amish fellows lay a foundation for a house in the morning, and by 5 p.m. a roof was on that house,” he said. Many people in his community had been skeptical of Caucasian people, but developing relationships with them broke down some walls. He spoke of how those served by MDS volunteers are now learning to serve. “We must go beyond this disaster and start taking care of the spiritual needs in our country.”

Murray Morrow Jr. of Birmingham, Ala., spoke of how volunteers from Region II calmed frayed nerves through the comfort of bringing God’s presence. A tornado, with winds of 260 mph, tore through Oak Grove and Oak Ridge in April 1998, damaging or destroying about 2000 homes and killing about 34 people. Morrow, a member of the Oak Ridge community advisory board, worked closely with MDS, which helped to rebuild 15 homes and repair 80 more.

“People went through a shock and a trembling,” he said. “You listened without criticizing or making judgements. Your heard our cry for help. You brought peace and direction to our confused community. God came through you to help make us whole again.”

Murray Jr. and Annie Lois Morrow (left) of Birmingham, Ala., meet with Hezekiah and Diane Stewart of College Station, Ark., at MDS’s 50th anniversary. The couples worked with MDS in their communities ravaged by tornadoes.

Pete and Mary Anne Friesen of Halbstadt, Man., spoke of how MDSers from Region V cleared mud out of their basement and grief out of their lives. A Red River flood ravaged their home in April 1997, several months after Pete was injured in an industrial accident that took his brother Jack’s life.

“If not for MDS, I couldn’t have gone on,” he said. “It was like we were drowning, and someone threw us a lifeline. I wasn’t done grieving for Jack when the second tragedy struck. I’d hate to think where we would be now without MDS.”

About seven volunteers shoveled crumpled dry wall out of basement windows and cleaned the house for a couple of days in May 1997.

“I remember feeling relieved when the MDSers showed up,” Mary said. “I knew God was going to help us.”

Inspectors determined the home could be rebuilt. Construction began; by mid-August 1997, the Friesens moved back in.

“God taught us a lot through this suffering,” Mary said. “We have grown closer to Him and to each other.”

James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, read a letter from President Clinton on June 2, praising MDS for 50 years of helping people in times of need. Witt, a Baptist and a former deacon of his home church in Arkansas, said MDS reminded him of Luke 6:39: “‘Give, and it will be given to you.’ The richest people I know are those who have given themselves unselfishly to others,” he said. “MDS volunteers have seen the worst in human experience but the best in humanity. You have seen people find the best in themselves in the worst of times.”

Although FEMA uses the latest technology in its disaster-response efforts, Witt said, simple tools do the most important jobs. “Our work really comes down to one universal tool that meets any challenge we may face. It’s called a hammer.”

In one of four main speeches, historian Robert Kreider of North Newton, Kan., described MDS as a moveable tent of hospitality. “Abraham and Sarah hosted others in a moveable tent of hospitality,” he said. “Thus, too, MDS pitches its tent in a devasted community to become a tent of hosptiality, goodwill and hope.”

Peter Wiebe, a retired pastor from Glendale, Ariz., spoke at the anniversary banquet Friday night. He called on MDS volunteers to identify with disaster victims’ pain and to be agents of healing. The Bible is full of stories of disasters, and it is the pain that shapes the people, he said.

Peter Dyck of Scottdale, Pa., a retired Mennonite Central Committee worker and pastor, told of the vision that birthed MDS and still sustains it. He played a key role in the early years of MDS. In 1952, while pastoring at Eden Mennonite Church near Moundridge, Kan., he helped expand the MSO to include people from the General Conference Mennonite Church and other Mennonite groups. His work with MCC in Europe after World War II provided the inspiration for expanding MDS into an inter-Mennonite organization that would respond to disasters across North America.

Dyck told of talking with longtime MCC chairman P.C. Hiebert, who said as he was near death that serving others was the greatest thing that made his life meaningful. “Hiebert had found the secret,” said Dyck. “Jesus said the same thing. ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.’ And that’s what MDS is all about, isn’t it?”

Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity, spoke at the concluding Sunday morning worship service on the Hesston College soccer field. Founded in 1976, Habitat for Humanity has built homes for 85,000 families, helping those who would otherwise not be able to afford good housing. Fuller sees his agency as an ally with MDS. “You do the work that is needed at that moment, to restore broken lives.” We are closest to God when we are serving – giving our sweat so that others might have a more abundant life, he said.

Youth impact through service

Running parallel to MDS 2000 and the 50th anniversary celebration, 250 youth volunteers and sponsors from MDS constructed two houses in a weekend building blitz in Florence, Kan.

The youth ate, slept, worshipped and worked at the Morning Star Ranch, the home of a residential housing program for inner-city young men affiliated with World Impact. The two-year program is designed to help its participants develop spiritually and vocationally, providing them with the skills they need for life. The new buildings will increase the capacity of that program to 18-25 men.

Young women volunteers serve at the MDS youth event by fastening roofing panels to the new homes at the Morning Star Ranch in Florence, Kan.

Max Barbosa, a 19-year-old who graduated from Morning Star in May, shared with the MDS youth about a life of running with gangs and how he came to the ranch to “get closer to God and away from the distractions in the city.”

In addition to framing the houses, the MDS youth moved rocks, built stone retaining walls and poured concrete.

Morning Star director Jim Evans said, “What was most impressive to me was when [the youth] came to me and asked ‘What can I do next?’ They had a time to play and a time to work. They discerned the difference.”

The volunteers represented 20 youth groups from Canada and the US. Winnipeg’s Jon Buller Trio led the youth in worship throughout the weekend as well as performing at the inter-generational service Sunday morning in Hesston which concluded the weekend celebration.

 – Mennonite Weekly Review, Mennonite Disaster Service News Service

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Last modified July 16, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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