Peter Nguyen and Kim Bui, left, celebrate 40 years of marriage with an official church wedding ceremony officiated by Pastor April Yamasaki on Aug. 10, 2014.
Peter Nguyen and Kim Bui received an anniversary gift on August 10 that they never got at their wedding 40 years ago: a church ceremony with a marriage licence.
In “Differently gifted,” Will Braun discusses the high emotional stakes related to the closure of facilities for people with intellectual disabilities. Here are more items he collected.
The Freedom Tour trailer
"I don't want to remember it,” Hugo Unruh says of the grim spring day in 1972. He and his wife at the time, pulled into the 40-hectare complex an hour west of Winnipeg that then housed 1,000 people with intellectual disabilities with Nick, their 13-year-old son.
Beige cement walls intersect with light green shag carpet. The smell of sugar and over-brewed yet weak coffee mingles with bits of conversation and the clink of spoons on ceramic church mugs.
As your advocate for children in the life of the church, I continually encourage others to offer child-friendly worship services. Assembly 2014 worship planners offered a fine example of doing just that by inviting children to help out with the closing service on July 3, and making them feel at home.
On a perfectly lovely summer day last month, I joined a couple hundred people for a worship service on the edges of a wheat field. The crop on the field is dedicated to the work of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. Each year, individual farmers from Catholic, Lutheran and Mennonite churches join with local seed, fertilizer and insurance businesses to produce a crop.
Back in 2011, I met with an elderly person to assist her with will and estate planning. “Maggie’s” intentions were to name a couple of friends as executors and give her entire estate to a lone surviving family member with whom she didn’t have much contact.
In the spring of 1985, Coke decided to change the recipe of its flagship beverage for the first time in 99 years. The intensity of consumer rejection was unprece-dented. Protesters took to the streets.
It takes a lot of hands to raise a cabin wall! Families work together on the Mennonite Disaster Service cabin-building project at Camp Valaqua.
Samuel Friesen, left, Levi Jowet-Stark, Kobe Friesen and Asher Warkentin are hard at work pounding nails for the foundation of a new cabin at Camp Valaqua.
Camp programs were in full swing alongside Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) hammers at Camp Valaqua this summer. MDS teams are usually found on disaster sites, helping to rebuild homes, so why are they building cabins at a thriving church camp? And why are there children wearing hardhats, pounding nails and using staple guns?
Ilda Bauman in the early 1940s in front of The House of Friendship for all the Nations on King Street in Kitchener, Ont.
From left to right, flanking the Joseph Cramer cut-out are: Shelley Holmes, HoF stewardship officer; Martin Buhr, former HoF director; and, Sharon Reimer, Mary Lynn Dedels and Ken Bauman, who received the Buhr Friendship Legacy Award on behalf of the late Ilda Bauman. (Credit: Dave Rogalsky)
A paper cut-out of Joseph Cramer has stood prominently at the many House of Friendship (HoF) events during the Kitchener-based social agency’s 75th-anniversary year.
Sometimes one needs to step over the line in order to score a hit, as this youngster discovers at MC Saskatchewan’s ‘day in the park’ in Saskatoon last month.
Sometimes one needs to step over the line in order to score a hit, as this youngster discovers at MC Saskatchewan’s ‘day in the park’ in Saskatoon last month.
Children aren’t the only ones enjoying games at MC Saskatchewan’s recent ‘day in the park.’ Ken Warkentin of Nutana Park Mennonite Church has some fun knocking a stack of pails over with a foam ball.
Picnickers enjoy Vietnamese cuisine at MC Saskatchewan’s recent ‘day in the park.’ The meal was a fundraiser for Saskatoon Vietnamese Mennonite Church.
Thanh Tung, pastor of the Saskatoon Vietnamese Mennonite Church, thanks participants for their support following a fundraising meal held as part of MC Saskatchewan’s ‘day in the park.’
Musicians Sam Dlugokecki, left, Becky Reesor from Ontario, right, and Danielle Miller from British Columbia, centre, entertain members of Mennonite Church Saskatchewan at the area church’s recent ‘day in the park.’
The sun shone, the air was warm—but not too warm—and there were no mosquitoes. It was, in fact, a day perfect for a picnic.
On Aug. 10, people of all ages gathered at Scott Park, adjacent to Mount Royal Mennonite Church in Saskatoon, to enjoy Mennonite Church Saskatchewan’s “day in the park.”
Executive director John Neufeld, left, and board president Trent Bauman stand with the Joseph Cramer cut-out at House of Friendship’s 75th annual meeting on June 17. Behind them is a quilt designed by Judy Martin and sewed by Arlene Martin, to be auctioned off to help fund House of Friendship.
When John Neufeld took the reins as director of Kitchener’s House of Friendship (HoF), he was confused by the 19 separate programs it was running: shelters, a food bank, addiction programs, a youth program, work in community centres, and on and on. How to make sense of it all?
Bill Maust
On a Wednesday evening in early June, Waterloo musician and musicologist Wilbur (Bill) Maust was seated in the chapel of Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, Ont., among some 170 family and friends, to attend a concert organized in his honour by Stephanie Martin.
“The only safe place is inside the story,” reads an epigraph to this first novel by Sarah Klassen of Winnipeg. This story moves through a momentous year in the life of the Wittenberg family, and it unfolds within the larger narratives of family history and coming of age in 21st-century Canada.
‘Whatever happened to forgiveness?’
Re: Pastor’s credentials withdrawn,” July 7, page 23.
“We would benefit more if our leaders were leading more and following less,” lamented one reader in reflecting on the Being a Faithful Church (BFC) discussions at Assembly 2014 this past July. “It is very difficult to guide a scattering herd of sheep from the rear.”
Sol Sanderson, former chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, addresses festival-goers at the Spruce River Folk Festival.
The Joy Singers—left to right: Wilf Buhler, Art Zacharias, Gordon Martens and Ben Buhler—perform at the Spruce River Folk Festival. Three of the four singers are members of Osler Mennonite Church.
Roland Ray, left, of the Mathias Colomb First Nation, Sandy Bay, Sask., shows festivalgoer Les Hurlburt how ancient rock paintings depict the land that once belonged to the band.
George Kingfisher, Young Chippewayan hereditary chief, addresses festival-goers at the Spruce River Folk Festival.
Prince Albert singer/songwriter Violet Naytowhow performs traditional and original compositions at the Spruce River Folk Festival.
It may be a blip on the radar compared to other events of its kind, but what it lacks in size the Spruce River Folk Festival more than makes up for in heart.
The pews are pushed together along the walls while in the middle of the sanctuary children play an energetic game of Duck, Duck, Goose. Vacation Bible School (VBS) is in session at Eyebrow Mennonite Church.
For several years, Mennonite Church Saskatchewan has employed a travelling VBS troupe to bring summer Christian education to rural and urban congregations alike.
I had the good fortune of camping in Algonquin Park in northeastern Ontario a few weeks ago, a perfect place to observe the Perseid meteor shower that happens every August.
Two stories on sexual abuse have re-emerged recently on the Mennonite scene that call for sober reflection and some self-examination, but not self-obsession. They should be seen, in the present, as “teachable moments” and occasions for healing, rather than harsh judgments on the sins of our fathers.
I grew up in a church where everything was painted “Sola Scriptura.” I’m not referring to some chic Greco-Roman inspired hue from Benjamin Moore, but a Latin phrase meaning “Scripture Alone” which coloured the way we saw everything under the sun. “Sola Scriptura” was the primary pillar and doctrinal gatekeeper of Protestant faith.
On a deliciously warm summer afternoon in the middle of August, I greeted my neighbour who is a teacher. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then I began to ask him about the coming school year. “Don’t even start down that direction,” he warned, holding up his hand palm-out, like a nonverbal stop sign.
Johanna and Sophia Nast-Kolb with two of their rabbits. (Photo by Evelyn Rempel Petkau)
Marcus Rempel and Johanna Nast-Kolb tend plants in the Christian community’s greenhouse. (Photo by Evelyn Rempel Petkau)
Nestled in the bend of the Brokenhead River at the very end of a country road is a small Christian community trying to live responsibly and faithfully. Four family units are shareholders of this 58-hectare piece of land that was formerly a commercial strawberry farm.
In the retail shopping world, the dog days of summer are no longer known as “August,” but rather “back-to-school.” This has become the year’s second largest seasonal shopping event behind “winter holidays” (not “Christmas”).
