Masum Khandakar is a Bangladeshi rice farmer with a craggy face and a jutting white beard that flares as wide as the wings of his collared shirt. His voice goes high when his emotions overwhelm him. That is what happened one day in late December when he stood up during a community meeting inside a dimly lit schoolhouse in the town of Kotalipara and described what Koinonia had done for him.
The team from Elmira Mennonite Church ended the Hawkesville and Markham church dynasties at this year’s Bible quizzing competition, held on April 9, 2016, at Steinmann Mennonite Church near Baden.
When Henry and Hilda Schulz of Sanford, Man., were still farming, one of the crops they grew was barley.
As friends at their church—Sargent Avenue Mennonite in Winnipeg—learned this, they asked them for barley seed to make Easter centrepieces, as a way to bring a little spring and new life into their homes.
Marketed “for twenty- and thirty-somethings who wish they could do camp again,” Pastors in Exile (PiE) and Silver Lake Mennonite Camp near Sauble Beach, Ont., ran what they called “Winter Camp for Grown-ups” from March 4 to 6, 2016.
From plain coats to lace-covered wedding dresses, Amanda Bartel, a history major from Iowa City, Iowa, is cataloging Bluffton University’s historic clothing collection to learn more about what it means to dress like a Mennonite. She explained the cataloging process for students, faculty, staff and community members on March 1, 2016, at Bluffton University.
First nations, Lutheran and Mennonite movie-goers crowded into Saskatoon’s Roxy Theatre on March 13, 2016, popcorn in hand, to watch the premiere of Reserve 107: Reconciliation on the Prairies.
Mennonite churches in Europe are responding to the violence and displacement in the Middle East that is affecting their society.
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mennonitischer Gemeiden (AMG, Mennonite Church in Germany) and Algemene Doopsgezind Societeit (ADS, Dutch Mennonite Society) each wrote a letter to their governments urging peace.
Conrad Grebel University College hosted Sir James MacMillan as the 2016 Rodney and Lorna Sawatsky Visiting Scholar. The Scottish composer and conductor, best known for his sacred choral works, gave his Sawatsky Lecture address, “The spiritual in music,” on March 1, 2016.
Because I grew up in the Mennonite tradition, conscientious objection is not a foreign concept to me. I was raised to value peace over violence and to treat every human life as sacred and precious. These values have stayed with me throughout my life.
Steve Heinrichs is passionate about healing broken relationships between indigenous and settler peoples. As Mennonite Church Canada’s director of indigenous relations, he is committed to responding positively to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Call to Action No.
The greeting you get when visiting Yhya Al Kurdi’s apartment is full of excitement. Before you actually reach the door, Al Kurdi has opened it and stands at the end of the long corridor, waiting as you walk the rest of the way. Though he doesn’t know much English yet, he’ll give an enthusiastic, “Hello, hello, hello!” as he ushers you inside.
After six years of training and preparation, the Vietnam Mennonite Church (VMC), a Mennonite World Conference member, ordained 26 pastors in Ho Chi Minh City on 5 December 2015.
Resident Erna Kreiter, standing, visits with guests at an open house held at Prairie Meadow Place on March 5. From left are Cookie Esperance, Irene Kortko, Della Klaassen and Shirley Otterbein. (Photo by Donna Schulz)
Prairie Meadow Place occupies the main floor of this new three-storey structure, with 12 condominium units making up the second and third stories. (Photo by Donna Schulz)
Dorine Russell enjoys living at Prairie Meadow Place in Rosthern, Sask. (Photo by Donna Schulz)
Staff at Prairie Meadow Place enjoy their spacious new workplace. (Photo by Donna Schulz)
Dorine Russell sits in a comfortable armchair in her new room at Prairie Meadow Place, a cup of coffee by her side. “This is a wonderful place,” she says. “I love it here.” Russell moved to Rosthern, Sask., from Ontario a year ago to be near her daughter, who lives in Waldheim.
Karla Fehr, a member of Blumenort Mennonite Church in Gretna, Man., was part of a food study tour group organized by the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. They travelled to Nicaragua for about two weeks earlier this year to learn about the link between global hunger and small-scale farmers.
It’s only 8:30 a.m., but the temperature in the Sundarbans region of India is already hovering around 35 degrees Celsius.
“We see them, but we do not know them.” That was an observation a Mexican friend made to Rebecca Janzen, about the Low German speaking Mennonites in Mexico. Recently Janzen was the 2016 C. Henry Smith Peace Lecturer at Bluffton University, speaking on the topic “Small Signs of Pluralism in Mexico: Identification Cards and Other Images of the Low German Mennonites.”
Jono Cullar of Waterloo, Ont., was honoured with a 20 under 35 award from Mennonite Economic Development Associates late last year for exemplifying “MEDA values: faith, service and an entrepreneurial spirit.”
The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development has named Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) as 12th in a list of 28 seminaries in North America that excel in offering courses on faith and ecology.
Stuart Murray, British author of the popular book The Naked Anabaptist: The Bare Essentials of a Radical Faith, is the featured speaker at a fundraising dinner for Canadian Mennonite, to be held at the Rosthern (Sask.) Mennonite Church on Saturday evening, April 23, 2016, at 6 p.m. The event follows two days of the annual meeting of the Canadian Mennonite Publishing Service.
For Keila Viana, seeing how art can heal wounds deepened her understanding of God and God’s love during her international service in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
“I believe that during this time God worked a lot in my life,” says Viana, a 22-year-old young adult from the Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Camino de Santidad, in Honduras.
On January 30, 2016, nearly 100 people gathered in downtown Seoul, Korea, to participate in the first Korean Anabaptist conference.
Violating the conventions of biker culture landed the United Kingdom Christian motorcycle club, God’s Squad, in hot water. With the help of its president Joseph (pseudonym), who is a member of the Anabaptist Network, they kept their cool and found a peaceful path to resolution.
Meeting at the new Mennonite Heritage Museum in Abbotsford, B.C., gave the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada the opportunity to see this new facility that tells the faith story of Mennonites in the Fraser Valley and is also the new home of the Mennonite Historical Society of B.C. Representatives from Mennonite historical societies and organizations from across Canada met Jan.
Back in 2009, when I was 12 years old, I remember being crammed into the back row of a standing-room-only crowd at the final concert of the annual Ontario Mennonite Music Camp.
Star Wars (the original by George Lucas) arrived in Winnipeg in the early summer of 1977. I went to the first screening of the day (around noon) and was so blown away by what I saw and heard (the score, not the banal dialogue) that I stayed in the theatre for four successive viewings, something I had never done before and would never do again.
