Time to move
There are about a hundred Mexican Mennonite families currently living in the Niagara Region. According to Wilhelm Harder, most of these Old Colony Mennonite families came from Mexico, between 20 and 30 years ago, to settle in and around Virgil and Niagara-on-the-Lake. He and his wife, with their three children, came from Zacatecas, Mexico. They…
‘Colombia fever’
Despite warnings from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), Low German Mennonites from drought-prone regions of northern Mexico have bought over 20,000 hectares of land in Colombia. Kennert Giesbrecht, long-time editor of Die Mennonitische Post—a newspaper for Low German Mennonites throughout the Americas—notes the Liviney Colony and another 12,000-hectare parcel as two examples of land acquisitions. Another…
Healing the Mennonite class divide
The recent coverage of three issues raises the delicate question of how we mainstream Mennonites relate to our more traditional Anabaptist cousins, especially when their troubles surface.
Boxing up the Old Colony Mennonites
In his July 8, 2013 editorial, Dick Benner considers “the trouble with labels.” He says that in our pluralistic society we tend to put people into boxes with a smug “now we know who you are.” This stereotyping, he says, “de-humanizes,” divides and tends to “self-righteousness.” I found it deeply ironic that the very same…
Ministry in a very different world
In 2009, when Dave and Margaret Penner first went to work among Low German-speaking Mennonites in Mexico, they encountered a “vacuum.”
