MC Canada calls for prayer for Ethiopia and Eritrea
Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) held a nationwide fasting and prayer for peace on Nov. 16. “Believers are still praying for peace, individually and collectively,” they announced. “At present, our hope is in God alone. We kindly request the Mennonite families in North America and around the world to pray for our country. We need peace…
Watch: A look inside Meserete Kristos College
This past March, we published a story about Lynell Bergen’s sabbatical at Meserete Kristos College in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. Bergen, who is the lead pastor at Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, spent her sabbatical teaching at the college. Now, you can watch a video exploring the time Bergen and her husband, Brian Dyck, spent at MKC. The…
Cross-cultural challenges and blessings
Lynell Bergen exchanged the snowstorms and sub-zero temperatures of a Winnipeg winter this year for the warm sunshine and mountains of Ethiopia. Bergen is a pastor of Hope Mennonite Church in Winnipeg and is currently spending a sabbatical teaching at Meserete Kristos College in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. “I was tired and just felt like I had…
Ethiopia’s Meserete Kristos College at 25
The beginning of 2019 marked the silver anniversary of Meserete Kristos College. In January 1994, there were only a handful of Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) leaders trained in Bible or theology. Now there are 1,864 men and women who have graduated from one of the college’s certificate, diploma or degree programs in Bible and Christian…
How steam wells work to relieve droughts in Ethiopia
In parts of the world where the effects of climate change are severe and rains are dangerously infrequent, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is supporting innovative projects to improve access to water. In the Afar region of Northern Ethiopia, MCC supported the Afar Pastoralist Development Association (APDA) to build and maintain a steam well benefitting 60…
Mennonites connect over pancakes
It was more than 20 years ago when two Mennonites from Germany travelled to Ethiopia to explore the possibility of doing mission work with the Mennonite church there. After two weeks of searching for Mennonites in Addis Ababa, they finally located the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) office and received directions to a Meserete Kristos Church…
The blood of modern-day martyrs
It was the Christian apologist Tertullian in AD 197 who first wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” As he watched Christians killed in the bloody entertainment of colosseums and in summary legal procedures, he saw the church grow. Sixteenth-century Anabaptists echoed that quote as the cost of following Jesus…
Ethiopian Meserete Kristos Church continues to grow
While visiting Ethiopia recently, Darrell Jantzi and John Peters heard that Meserete Kristos Church (MKC) has continued to grow and now numbers 310,877 baptized members, an increase of 4.5 percent over last year. Jantzi and Peters, both from Ontario’s Waterloo Region, are members of an MKC Link Canada team that connects Mennonite Church Canada and…
Reclaiming Ethiopia
Manitoba correspondent Evelyn Rempel Petkau journeyed to Ethiopia last fall as part of a Canadian Foodgrains Bank-sponsored learning tour and reports her findings of the NGO’s work with Mennonite Central Committee, Meserete Kristos Church, and other relief and development agencies Thirty years ago, the world was gripped by images of people ravaged by hunger in…
