Why We Serve

Once a week, usually on Wednesday, we have one or more of our clients come to share dinner with us.  These events are the most special for those of us who don't get to visit with the clients as part of a building crew.  When I was serving in Myrtle Beach last spring, I really enjoyed getting to meet our clients and their neighbors.  This is when they really open up about the trauma they have experienced, and when we can see how much our service matters to them. Almost all of the clients I have listened to share a common feeling that the real value of MDS is that they are around one year, two years, or more after the disaster.  Before I got involved with MDS I always wondered if this was going too far.  Surely they would have completed the work by then.  Only after listening to person after person sharing the timeline of their struggles did I begin to realize why the long-term support is so necessary.

Last night at dinner our client was a single woman whose house was severely damaged in the flood.  She told us about how during and after the flood, her adrenaline levels were so high, it kept her going as she escaped, helped others, and they began the recovery process.  There was a feeling of excitement at having gone through something terrible and come out on top.  It brought the community together.

As the recovery continued, however, the excitement and feeling of community spirit wore off, and was replaced quickly by anguish when many of the victims were told that their entire neighborhood was being condemned, and that many areas were being left to natural floodplain.  She said that if the city had offered a reasonable buyout, they could have just started over, but that the buyout was for what the property was "worth" after the flood.  Many of those affected are retired people living on pensions, most with a substantial mortgage on those properties.  The buyouts will not nearly cover even the existing mortgage, much less rebuilding.  A sense of helpless rage has augmented the sense of despair.

This is where MDS has become literally a lifesaver.  We are currently the only remaining recovery group in Grand Forks.  Every one of our clients has said that they literally had no options left except bankruptcy.  They were all homeowners, now with no home, and crushing payments on property that no longer exists.  The client who spoke last night is living in a part of the condemned house while she build a tiny house on a house-trailer chassis. (see Busy Friday)  She plans to have the trailer towed to a new site above flood level once it is finished.  She told how she was at a point of desperation when faced with the amount of work she needed to do, when MDS finally approved her project.  She burst into tears when she described the way her burden was suddenly removed, and she felt she could start to imagine a future again at that point.  (I wasn't crying, You were!)  To those of us who stay behind every day when the crews go out, it is moments like this that make us understand why we have washed dishes, cut vegetables, made sticky buns, shopped for groceries $200 a trip, worked from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. Monday thru Friday for a month or more.  It is way more than worth it just to see the relief in those clients' eyes.  This is what God has called us to do.  All of us who gather together at a project site are of one mind and heart in this endeavor, and I daresay that none of us would work harder for pay than we do when we volunteer to serve.