Walking through open doors
John and Edna Peters, 87 and 86, respectively, live in Winnipeg, where they are charter members of Charleswood Mennonite Church. Edna worked as a nurse and a pastoral coordinator and served on the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) board, while John taught agriculture at two universities, served with MCC in Paraguay and Bolivia, and worked as…
Making space might save someone’s life
Notice: This article mentions addiction, rape and abortion. “I never thought I would set foot in another church.” These were the opening words from Grace Ibrahima’s sermon at Rockway Mennonite Church in Kitchener, Ontario on June 2. “Churches can be somewhere warm and comforting and reassuring and accepting, with a lot of hope and aspiration.…
There’s a gift in every day
Erv and Marian Wiens, both 82, have been married for 60 years. Raised in the Mennonite Brethren Church, they worked with Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Kenya, Zambia, and Ontario. Erv also pastored in Breslau, Ontario; Windsor, Ontario; Calgary, Alberta; and in South Korea, before serving as an interim pastor in several congregations. Marian’s first…
Never forgotten or forsaken
When I was five years old, two forces shook my world to its core. Before this, I had a loving family, a good school and a beautiful country. But that year, 1960, thousands of Ethiopian troops invaded my country of Eritrea. A dark cloud of fear hung over the land and the people. People spoke…
Ninety-two-year-old artist publishes children’s book
When Rita Dahl was a child, the bottom third of the family’s kitchen door was her canvas. The top sections were for her older sisters to draw on. “We were products of the Depression and we couldn’t buy a lot of paper, so our mother let us draw on the kitchen door,” she said. “We…
Running toward Jesus
My faith story is one of conversion. I was not simmered in the faith like many people, nor did I have a lightning bolt experience where I remember the exact day and time I came to faith. My dad was a Catholic conservative from Cape Breton Island and my mom was a Protestant socialist from…
From the ‘centre of the military universe’ to central Alberta
Debbie Bledsoe wants people to know about the beauty she sees in the Mennonite Church. “I think people who grew up in it lose sight of what makes Anabaptism unique,” she says. Today, Bledsoe is the pastor at First Mennonite Church in Edmonton, Alberta. But her teenage years were spent in a Nazarene church in Fayetteville—a city in North Carolina next to Fort Liberty (formerly Fort Bragg), a military base once described…
Life in the 80s
From southern Manitoba to B.C., and from Idaho to India, Bill Block had a long and varied career as a pastor. Along the way, he and his wife Dolores, who died in 2019, raised four children. Block, who is a founding member of Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, spoke with Canadian Mennonite four days after his 90th…
Life in the 80s
Model As, bucket lists and dwelling in God Fran Schiller, 87, grew up on a farm near Goshen, Indiana, the ninth of 10 children. She attended Goshen College, where she found her faith strengthened and her eyes opened to a new world beyond life on the farm. After teaching for a few years, she…
Fifty years of listening to poets
A new book celebrates the work of one of the foremost scholars of Mennonite literature. On Mennonite/s Writing: Selected Essays is the first collection of work by Hildi Froese Tiessen, professor emerita of English and peace and conflict studies at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo. Edited by Robert Zacharias and published last December by…
