Safwat Marzouk
Cindy Wallace
Willard Metzger
One of the highlights of Mennonite Church Canada’s assemblies are the times of worship and spiritual enrichment. The theme of Assembly 2016 (July 6-9), God~Faith-People, is paraphrased from the Old Testament text Jeremiah 31:33: “This is the covenant . . . I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Bryan Moyer Suderman released a new CD, I’m Glad You’re Here: Songs of Hope and Struggle, on May 6, 2016, in Stouffville, Ont. The concert was also a fundraiser for the “Welcome the Stranger” initiative for refugee support (an initiative of the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in the greater Toronto area), and on the night of the concert raised almost $10,000.
Six women and six men from across North America have been chosen to serve on the committee for the new song collection for Mennonite churches planned for release in 2020.
The 2016 Michael Sattler Peace Prize has been awarded to the Ekklesiyar Yan’uwa a Nigeria (EYN) and EYN’s “Christian and Muslim Peace Initiative” (CAMPI), founded in 2010 with Muslim partners.
This online supplement accompanies the feature, “The lucky struggle,” about workers in the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP).
In a land that closely resembles the place Jesus lived more than 2,000 years ago, his words still prove true. The people of Sidi, Burkina Faso, plant their fields with the tools and methods described in the New Testament. They draw water from wells, and feed their families with crops they harvest.
Alvin Thiessen completed the 800-kilometre pilgrimage on the Camino de Compostela. He reached the Cape of Fisterra, on the Atlantic coast, 90 kilometres past the city of Santiago de Compostela. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
Alvin Thiessen started his pilgrimage from Saint Jean Pied de Port, France, and tackled the Pyrenees Mountains on the first day. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
Pilgrims walk the highest point along the Camino, looking down towards Molinaseca, Spain. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
The Camino de Santiago path runs along a canal close to Carrion De Los Condes, Spain. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
The sea shell is the symbol of the Way of St. James (Camino de Santiago). Here it appears with a monastery in the background, in Samos, Spain. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
A wall painting near the city of Burgos gives humorous insight into the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. (Photo by Alvin Thiessen)
After 10 days of walking, I come to a small town in Spain called Belorado. The day before, I had walked a gruelling 31 kilometres up and down hills, in warm and sunny spring weather. Maybe it’s the long walk and my feet are tired, or, maybe it’s the constant climbing up and down the hills, but something feels different under my left foot.
In June 1942, 3,000 Mennonites gathered at the Kitchener, Ont., train station to bid farewell to conscientious objectors (COs) bound for forest-fire fighting and tree-planting camps in British Columbia.
The 2016 Ralph and Eileen Lebold Fundraising Dinner, held on June 2, 2016, at Conrad Grebel University College, featured Arli Klassen, chief development officer for Mennonite World Conference, who spoke to the “Messiness of becoming the people of God.”
You planned a party for 200 people, with games geared for groups of 20. Food quantities have been tallied, and overnight lodging arranged for guests who are coming from far away. And then you find out that only a handful of the invited guests are able to come.
As a five-year-old resting in her mother’s arms at the bottom of a boat crowded with refugees, Nhung Tran could not have imagined the life she’s living now: a life as a doctor in Canada. A life in which she is responsible for bringing two families to safety as a sponsor.
The worldwide Mennonite family can now add Hmong to the growing number of ethnic groups embracing Anabaptism in Asia.
UPDATE: Youth Assembly 2016 has been cancelled, due to a shortfall in the number of registrations. See here for more information.
UPDATE: Youth Assembly 2016 has been cancelled, due to a shortfall in the number of registrations.
For the first time ever, Mennonite Church Canada youth are preparing to actively participate in organized discussions and votes taking place during the national assembly—God~Faith~People,—to be held from July 6 to 10, 2016, in Saskatoon, Sask.
We’re already implementing creation care practices. Let’s share what we’re doing.
That’s the message behind “Caring for God’s Good Creation,” a seminar to take place on July 10, 2016, following Mennonite Church Canada’s Assembly 2016.
Bradley Kauffman of Cincinnati, Ohio, has been named project director for the new song collection for Mennonite Church Canada (MC Canada) and Mennonite Church USA (MC USA). The print version is slated for release in 2020. He will perform work on a contract basis before assuming a full-time staff position on July 5, 2016.
In his valedictory address at Canadian Mennonite University’s (CMU) graduation service at Immanuel Pentecostal Church on April 24, 2016, Jonas Cornelsen tackled head on the question, “What are you going to do with your degree?”
The first-ever Camps with Meaning (CWM) Song-a-thon went for eight hours, featuring 14 musical acts. Held at Canadian Mennonite University on April 16, 2016, the event raised $20,000 that will go toward building four new, all-season cabins at Camp Assiniboia, one of three camps that are part of CWM, the camping ministry of Mennonite Church Manitoba.
“I have a new appreciation for the phrase, ‘spreads like wildfire,’” says Patrick Drapeau. He and his wife, Rachel, live in Fort McMurray, the Alberta community that has faced raging wildfires for more than a week in early May 2016.
Calling themselves the Basket Cases, a small group of women meets monthly for a fibre arts challenge at The Clothes Basket, a Mennonite Central Committee thrift store in Rosthern, Sask.
Marianne Jantzi is the author of Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother, which has just been released by Herald Press as part of its Plainspoken series by Amish, Hutterite and plain Mennonite writers. In the book the author shares from the heart as she welcomes readers into her family’s daily life and Amish community.
Sergey Deynekin has dreams for the Chernobaevka Church in southern Ukraine. A bi-vocational pastor who works in the building trade, he developed architectural plans for a future church building after the congregation’s long-time rental location was no longer available and they moved into a vacant house. On Sundays, they crowd into two rooms with a pulpit placed near the doorway.
The board of governors of Conrad Grebel University College announced that president Susan Schultz Huxman has accepted the call to become the president of Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in Harrisonburg, Va.
Mennonites are responding to the recent earthquakes in Ecuador, where members of multiple Mennonite congregations are among 100,000 people affected by the disaster. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific coast of northern Ecuador on April 16, 2016, followed by a second earthquake on April 20. At least 570 people have been killed and more than 7,000 injured or missing.
