Report to March 15, 2008

The community of Pass Christian is slowly changing. As you move from area to area you come across road crews repairing roads, home owners repairing their homes. Spring clean-up is in progress. The people you meet seem to have an ‘upbeat’ to them that solicits smiles and laughter from those they meet. Change is happening and it goes beyond the physical improvements. The emotions seem to manifest optimism.

Pass Christian has had two interesting and somewhat unique groups in the past two weeks. One of them was a group of 31 college students from the Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania . Accompanied by several staff members, they were here during the semester break to employ their volunteering skills and to lend a hand to the local Katrina victims. The diversity represented by this group was substantial. Not only were they a mix of men and women, they also consisted of different belief systems and ethnic groups. From my experience this is unusual for volunteers on MDS projects.

Whereas the MDS has a philosophy and policy relating to the faith which guides the project’s operation and the general behavior of the volunteers, we were challenged to think and operate outside those parameters. The questions arose, in effect saying, can you treat everyone equally, you need to tolerate other faiths, etc. You can see how this certainly would set us to thinking.

The second group consisted of mainly young teenagers along with their chaperones, from several Mennonite churches near Waterloo . It was a delight to see the youngsters come with such anticipation. They had come to do whatever was dished out to them. They manifested confidence and eagerness which would bring joy to any employer's heart. In the end they urged us to line-up more daily tasks for the groups such as theirs, so that they would not have to stand around, doing nothing. The challenge for us as project leaders is to provide the necessary supervisors to give good guidance to these eager beavers. Dad, why don’t you volunteer too, come watch your teens grow, come help us provide input for that growth.