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Family camp becomes family’s summer highlight
A week of Family Camp at Camp Squeah turned out to be a summer highlight for the Wiens family of Abbotsford, B.C. Maria Wiens, her husband Gerhard and children Jacob and Elizabeth spent a week of their summer playing together, trying new activities, enjoying both family time and couple time, and being nurtured body and…
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Camp offers unique music experience
Ontario Mennonite Music Camp is gearing up for its 29th year of music making. We’ve got a lot to offer! As always, we promise lots of music: piano, voice, winds, brass, choir, strings, and new this year, guitar. We’ll have you staying in the dormitory at Conrad Grebel University College. We’ll let you sample some…
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A reason to celebrate…
As we reach the 50th anniversary of Hidden Acres, it is abundantly clear that we have reason to celebrate! A camp still surviving would be reason enough, but a still-thriving, growing facility and program is more than the brave founders 50 years ago could have dared to hope for. God’s generosity is tangible in the…
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Sagamace Bible Camp hopes to reopen this summer
Nordheim Mennonite Church in the small community of Winnipegosis is Mennonite Church Manitoba’s most remote congregation. More than 275 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg and far from other area church congregations, this small church community continues to thrive. Fifty years ago, the congregation began Sagamace Bible Camp, where it has offered two weeks of camping every…
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Poet struggles with Mennonite identity
Ancestral worship for Mennonite writers is a great temptation, Julia Spicher Kasdorf told a faculty forum at Conrad Grebel University College on Feb. 17 as part of the award-winning Mennonite poet’s three-day presence on campus as a visiting scholar sponsored by the Rod and Lorna Sawatsky Fund. Spicher Kasdorf, currently teaching creative writing and women’s…
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WISK women’s group bridges the age divide
Committee meetings have a reputation for being necessary but tedious. But at Foothills Mennonite Church, Calgary, there is a standout exception to the rule in the Women Intergenerational from Seniors to Kids (WISK) group. “For me, the committee is the source of great excitement,” says Kate Janzen. “The WISK committee is really fun”, adds Becky…
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On shaky ground
When the massive earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was one of the fortunate non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to receive money for its relief work from the government fund set up to match donations from Canadians, but by then the ground beneath Canadian NGOs had already shifted. MCC received $2.1 million for relief…
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Meeting our neighbours
Two neighbouring Winnipeg congregations, one Mennonite and the other Lutheran, decided to share their Sunday lunches and learn more about each other. In the process, they discovered that they had much in common. For four consecutive Sundays in early 2012, members of Home Street Mennonite Church and First Lutheran Church met after their respective worship…
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Keeping the faith
In the summer of 2010, my family and I experienced a history lesson that made us really think about what it means to be Mennonite. With my wife, Geraldine Balzer, our two daughters, and my wife’s sister and mother, I travelled back to the “old country,” Ukraine and Russia. Our first stop was Zaporozhe, where…
