Photo: Governor Haley with the MDS volunteers and others involved with rebuilding at the project site in Sumter, Carolina. Photo provided. 

Walking through Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) work sites in Sumter, SC, has been a regular occurrence recently for MDS project director, Earl Bouder.

On Wednesday, April 6, however, his walk took a different turn when he was accompanied by South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley, who was touring the MDS Sumter work sites that are operated primarily by the Lancaster County Amish Storm Aid teams.

Haley was visiting the flood area in an effort to boost support for One SC Flood Relief Fund, a statewide fundraising effort to provide building supplies for the ongoing repair and rebuilding of homes damaged by devastating floods in October 2015.

In addition to Bouder, the South Carolina Disaster Recovery Coordinator, Kevin Shwedo, accompanied Haley in touring two homes MDS volunteers are working on.

Volunteers from MDS have been involved in the South Carolina flood response since a few weeks after the flood occurred, first working on early response cleanup and now on repairing and rebuilding homes.

Haley warmly greeted the homeowners and MDS volunteers and spent more than an hour between the two job sites (which are next door to each other), according to Bouder.

“She engaged quite a number of folks in conversation,” Bouder said. “I believe she truly has a deep and genuine caring about what happened during the flood and the impact on the homeowner families.”

As Haley expressed her appreciation to MDS for the work done, she shook the hand of every volunteer. “We had all of our 18 volunteers outside the completely restored home,” Bouder added.

After the tour Haley posed for a photo with the group. Included in the photo where several local veterans who were local drivers for the Amish Storm Aid team.

Learn more at mds.net.