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News
By Elizabeth Miller Morning: Good morning from Guatemala! Enjoy this view from the garden of the Semilla campus, which we be our home base for the duration of our course. We have a full day today, including an opening orientation and…
by Mike McHugh Here’s to hoping that we do not endure as many travel mishaps on our journey to Lahaina as Steve Martin and John Candy experienced in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles! As I write this we are settled into our large bus…
Puerto Rico, here we come! As we wrapped up the semester and baseball season this past week, we are now turning our attention to our time in Puerto Rico in May. It will be a unique experience centered on reflections…
by Mike McHugh Next week we depart for Lahaina to join the many hands that have spent the last few years helping build homes for families impacted by the 2023 wildfires. Today, I want to share with you another great…
Only a few days until we embark for London! Roy Jackson and his husband Richard Orr are excited to be leading the Global Literature in London SST.
Only 10 days until we embark for Guatemala! Elizabeth Miller and Neil Richer are excited to be leading the “Youth and Resilience” Guatemala SST this year, accompanied by their two daughters.
Hillary Harder and Micah Detweiler will lead the summer 2026 SST unit in Ecuador.
by Mike McHugh Welcome to this year’s SST blog for the Environmental Disaster and Response with Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) May term course. This year we will be traveling to Lahaina, Hawai’i to work with MDS to build homes that…
On Wednesday, everyone returned to Quito, and we were reunited! It was a joy to spend four precious days together sharing stories from service, laughing and singing together, and processing who we want to be when we return home. The…
I’m stationed in the town of Latacunga for service, and am working with an organization called Pastoral Social Cáritas. One of the projects that the organization is working on is a farm in San Pablo, which is about a 25-minute…
One Friday while my host mom was traveling, my host relatives Bethany, Paulina, and Tito took care of me. We explored their town, Guano, including playing at a park and going to a bakery. We went out again at night…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Kupang is home for three…
At the foundation, “Su cambio por el cambio,” I work with elderly people in the mornings. I enjoy playing games, leading activities, and learning about their lives every day. The majority of the elderly who go to the foundation live…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Three of our students flew…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. One of our SSTers stayed…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Salatiga is a small, compact…
This Indonesia 2026 Community Engaged Learning blog series was compiled and edited using excerpts from a photo essay assignment submitted by our students. We hope you enjoy these snapshots from the second half of SST. Semarang is a coastal city…
This photo depicts my host sister Areli interacting with the owner of a small market close to my host family’s house in Puyo. My host family often has me take their electric moped to this store in the evenings to…
I freely admit that I’m nuts about birds. In Ecuador, I’ve been carrying my binoculars with me everywhere to search for birds in each hedge, telephone wire, and garden. My sincerest apologies to my fellow SSTers who are likely fed…
At the end of week 2, we began our trips to visit students in their service assignments. This week took us north of Quito to Imbabura province to visit Ray and Izzy in Ibarra and Micah and Alina in Otavalo.…
In preparation to leave for their service assignments last week, the students discussed what “service” means. Rather than thinking of this service period as work, they defined it as: the opportunity to be part of something larger in Ecuador giving…
At our farewell party on Friday, host families, teachers, language buddies, university administrators, coordinators and friends of the Indonesia SST program gathered at UKDW for a program put together by our amazing students. The students sang, played guess-who games, and…
We shifted into this transition week by celebrating Lunar New Year, Lent, and the start of Ramadan. It felt fitting that so many people in Yogyakarta are marking a transition into a new season while our SSTers begin their preparations…
Our last group hurrah during Study Term was visiting Borobudur Temple at sunrise. We woke up at 4:00 am, climbed a small hill to a lookout point, and were rewarded with this view: We toured the exquisite, ancient Buddhist temple,…
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