August 2014 - A New Adventure: Mennonite Central Committee

As many of you know it was a busy summer for me.  I'm just now getting caught up on the blog!

In the end of June, 2014 I transitioned out of my position at Health Horizons in the Dominican Republic and into a position in the Planning, Learning and Disaster Response Department at the main U.S. headquarters of Mennonite Central Committee, in Akron PA.

Leaving the D.R. was very difficult and I’m still maintaining many connections there, (and assisting with one project there that I’ll tell you about in a later post,) but in my life I’ve learned to just follow God’s leading one year at a time, and it seemed clear that this year, at least, God wanted me at MCC.  So I moved to Akron, PA and joined 59 other new MCC workers at a week and a half-long orientation session in Akron. 

Now, I’ve always loved MCC as an organization.  MCC, the outreach arm of the U.S. and Canadian Anabaptist churches, works in 60 countries around the world, with offices currently in 48 of those countries and local partners in all 60 countries. MCC does the work of “Relief, Development and Peace in the name of Christ.” Unlike many organizations that do great humanitarian work around the world, most of MCC’s staff in those offices around the world are volunteers.  At MCC they’re called Service Workers and most of them serve 3-5 year terms.

Walking into the training I was impressed with the sheer numbers – 60 new staff and service workers in an orientation session! A couple of us were staying to serve in the U.S. and Canada and the rest heading out to countries all across the globe.  As I got to know these folks, my orientation buddies, I also became impressed by their passion, their experience, and their levels of expertise for positions (many of them full-time volunteer jobs) that they were putting their U.S. possessions in storage for or selling altogether.  Single people were going. Husbands and wives; couples with small children; retired couples who had sent their youngest away to college and were now heading into an international field of service.

We had:

• A U.S. Attorney heading off with his International Development trained wife --  to do advocacy work in Haiti
• A female Canadian Engineer flying off to help Communities build Sand-Dams to provide water to villages and crops in Mozambique,
• A young man from El Salvador who speaks 5 languages heading back to Columbia, where he's been volunteering fro several years, to continue strengthening communities there and working for peace in a country torn by conflict.
• Another young man, from Mexico, who has been serving in rural communities across Latin America for years heading back once again for another three year volunteer term.
• A couple who met in high school while missionary kids growing up in Congo, now heading back to lead the country program there for MCC.

The list went on and on.

I was impressed by the diversity and global knowledge of the group, and also excited that we had people who were Local Staff from MCC programs in South Africa, Mozambique, and Columbia all at orientation with me too. After orientation they would go back to their own countries to continue working in instrumental positions in their MCC country programs, providing leadership, and helping the people of their home countries. 

"Music, rap, working with children, teens, families, conflict resolution, non-violence, construction of Peace." (A presentation by one of the Columbian staff members on MCCs current work in her home country, conflict-torn Columbia, South America.)

(Reporting on a Colombian women's trauma-healing support group. Here the women are talking about the murders caused by civil-war style fighting in their communities and sewing the story into a quilt as a visual way of thinking about the horrors and beginning to tell their story.)

And I don’t want to forget to mention the Canadians and U.S. citizens who attended orientation so they could return to their own communities in Canada and the U.S., working for economic justice, racial and cultural reconciliation, and many other great aspects of MCC's global work that also encompasses North America.

So, it has been a pleasure to get to know some of the many MCC workers who are, have been, and will continue to be serving around the world.  Below are links and photos to three stories about just a couple of the many cool programs and projects that MCC Volunteers (service workers) and local country-staff have been doing in various countries this Spring & Summer.
Click the blue links below to learn about:

1.) Hygiene and Health Kits for Refugees & People Recovering from Natural Disasters

2.) Disaster Preparedness and Recovery training for Pastors following Typhoon Haiyan

3.) The Children at the Border -- Helping address root causes

I will post a couple of links like this at the bottom of every post of mine this year, (and beginning in November I'll plan to post monthly).  I hope you'll take a few minutes to click on just the topics that interest you, to get an inside scoop on the work that MCC is doing around the world :).

1.)  Hygiene Kits from U.S./Canadian churches & MCC help refugees and people recovering from natural disasters around the world (currently more kits are needed in Syria).

2.) Filipino Pastors Strengthen Skills for Future Disasters following Typhone Haiyan.

3.) Two Links re: the "Children at the Border Crisis": Dealing with Root Causes of Central American Migration to the U.S. &  Helping South & North of the border