Retired banker serves as cook with Mennonite Disaster Service
Since her retirement, Judy Schmidt has found herself with extra time on her hands and she decided to dedicate her time and energy to helping those in need.
Schmidt, a retired banker living in Selkirk, spent February volunteering in Jennings, Louisiana, a city affected by hurricanes in 2020.
“As a society, we need to give something back. If we’re blessed with good health and the ability, we should give something back,” 66-year-old Schmidt said. “This is a small way for me to do it.”
Schmidt went to Jennings as a volunteer with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS), an organization that helps people recover from natural disasters in Canada and the United States. Schmidt has been involved with MDS since 2018, and this was her seventh time volunteering with the organization.
“I was talking to some friends of mine after I had retired, just saying I was looking for something to do because I felt like I had all this time on my hands,” Schmidt said. “They had done just a weeklong project or two, and they suggested I give it a try, so I called [MDS], and the rest is history.”
In Jennings, Schmidt was the head cook for volunteers rebuilding and repairing homes affected by hurricanes Delta and Laura that ripped through the area in 2020. Marian Minninger from Stuarts Draft, Virginia, was the assistant cook.
“You’d still see lots of houses with blue tarp roofs, people still waiting for help, people who didn’t have a lot of resources and the hurricane just knocked them on their backside. Your heart goes out to them,” she said. “Not everybody has the resources to get back on their feet.”
Schmidt volunteered Monday to Friday, waking up around 5 a.m. to start on breakfast. She and the kitchen team also had to get lunch items ready by 6:15 a.m. for the other volunteers to pack their meals before they went out for the day.
After cleaning, grocery shopping, and cooking supper, Schmidt finished her volunteering day around 7:30 p.m. or 8 p.m.
“It is a little tiring, but after a while, you get into the routine of it,” she said. “What keeps you motivated? You know you’re there helping somebody out.”
People who MDS was helping were invited to have dinner with the volunteers one evening, Schmidt said. She also got to go to a couple of house blessings once the projects were complete.
“We just get to enjoy celebrating the fact that they’ve got a repaired home, and so I enjoy that,” Schmidt said. “That’s what keeps me going, is getting to meet the people.”
Schmidt plans to volunteer with MDS again, likely in the new year.
