Mennonite Disaster Service All Unit Meeting

We came to Sarasota, Florida to attend the All Unit Mennonite Disaster Service meeting. The posted schedule said that the meeting would start this morning at 8:15. So we were up early in order to be there on time in order to pick up our registration materials before the meeting started. When we got the new schedule, we discovered the meeting was not going to start until 9 AM! We could have slept another hour!

Like any Mennonite gathering, this one is full of singing. The group has been singing old favorites from one of the older hymnals -- wonderful four-part harmony. Mennonite Disaster Service is made up of all the parts of the Anabaptist family, so there are Old Mennonites, Amish, Conservative Mennonites and Mennonite Church USA folks.

We were treated this noon to the singing of this very musical family. I took the picture with my iPhone and we weren't sitting very close, so it is what it is. The parents have four children under five. The little boy and girl in front sang with their parents -- the little girl sang a solo. The little guy the Dad is holding is sound asleep and the one the mother is holding is just one year old. What a talented family they are!

At this evening's banquet, we listened to this bluegrass trio, the Shenk Bluegrass Group. The two on the right are twins while the other is a friend. The middle brother got a lot of teasing about his "skunk-striped" beard with offers to auction it off...

It's been interesting to touch bases today with many of the people we've worked with on various MDS projects over the years. There are people here from all over the United States and Canada.