(Image by Gerd Altmann/Pixabay)
I have a vivid childhood memory of hearing my mother read C.S. Lewis’s book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Chapters 14 and 15 tell the story of the battle between life and death: the horrific killing of the hero, Aslan, the grieving of his faithful friends, and his triumphant emerging into life once again.
(Photo used with permission by Merri-Lee Metzger)
It is like the caterpillar, changing into a butterfly over time. In the cocoon, the caterpillar trusts the deep transformation that is happening without knowing what the end might possibly look like. (Photo used with permission by Merri-Lee Metzger)
(Photo used with permission by Merri-Lee Metzger)
Mary Magdalene couldn’t have known the end of the story—how things would turn out. How could she?
(Graphic by Betty Avery)
Marriage is a spiritual union of soulmates
Re: “God didn’t create you wrong,” Feb. 21, page 4.
(Photo by Sebastian Bill/Unsplash)
Our new Voices Together hymnal invites us to expand our circle. This involves getting to know people with different abilities, cultural ways, histories, faiths and stories that shaped them. It involves welcoming everyone as members of our human family.
(Photo: Ontario Women in Mission / Mennonite Archives of Ontario)
Spring! A time to shake off the cold and grey, decorate the church auditorium with quilts and share lunch and spiritual sustenance. This is the annual spring meeting and lunch of the Ontario Women in Mission at Bethany Mennonite Church in Virgil, Ont., in 1986.
(Photo by Kyle Glenn/Unsplash)
War seems close to home for many of us when it hits Ukraine. My paternal grandparents (and my husband’s) fled Crimea as refugees nearly 100 years ago, getting married in Kitchener, Ont., and then moving to Manitoba. Conversations are being triggered in my family and in our congregation on the multi-generational impacts of those traumas.
(Photo by J.F. Martin/Unsplash)
Can you believe that I proposed to my wife in a cemetery? It wasn’t premeditated. We went for a walk and ended up there. That’s when it felt right. I got down on one knee like a sentimentalist and said, “This is where it starts and this is where it ends.” The line just came to me.
Michael Wilms (left), pictured in 2015 with his wife, Caitlin, at the Chortitza Mädchenschule (secondary school for girls) in the village of Chortitza. (Photo courtesy of Michael Wilms)
My grandfather, Harry Giesbrecht, referred to the country, language and people of Ukraine as his “beating heart.” The many trips back “home” breathed life into his aging lungs. The cool water of the Dnieper, the pothole-riddled roads near Lichtenau, Molochansk and Nikopol, and the patriotic anthems transformed my 80-year-old grandfather into a young man.
Truck protests in Ottawa highlighted pandemic-related division in society. (Photo by lezumbalaberenjena on Flickr)
With the worst of the pandemic behind us—hopefully—how can the church help address the division left in its wake?
Those divisions were highlighted rather starkly by the truck convoys. And though the trucks have gone home, the fervour lives on. On both sides. Lines are drawn.
A gathering of pastors from Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces in Mexico who received medical supplies from Toronto Mennonite New Life Church. (Photo by Beatriz Mendez)
“We are out of the pews but in the community,” writes congregational member Olga Duran in the latest Toronto Mennonite New Life Church report, which summarizes 2021 as a year of immense giving and receiving of community support.
Sixty people gathered at Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) in Steinbach, Man. to pray for peace in Ukraine. (Photo by Judy Peters/Steinbach Online)
On the cold evening of March 13, about 60 people gathered outside at Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) in Steinbach, Man. to pray for peace in Ukraine. The museum, which commemorates the Mennonite people and their 500-year journey of migration, hosted the vigil to provide Manitobans an opportunity to grieve, pray and stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
On the day following the annual delegate sessions, members of MC Alberta took part in a joint worship service at First Mennonite Church, Calgary. Jenn Ratzlaff offers communion to Tim Wiebe-Neufeld, executive minister. (Photo by Ruth Bergen Braun)
“In spite of a global pandemic, we dared to dream,” said communications coordinator Ruth Bergen Braun in her review of the year at the Mennonite Church Alberta annual delegate sessions held March 19. “We dreamt of a future filled with healthy congregations with strong capable leadership, growing relationships, a renewed camp ministry and new ideas for interfaith work.”
Mary Boniferro, chair of mission and social concerns at Valleyview Mennonite Church accepts a community award from Elisabete Rodrigues, executive director of a local community organization in London, Ont. (Photo courtesy of Valleyview Mennonite Church)
Valleyview Mennonite Church has been recognized with an award for more than a decade of engagement and advocacy around food security issues in their community of northeast London, Ont.
LUSO Community Services, a neighbourhood resource centre, presented the church with its Community Service Award late last year.
Attendees of the annual delegate sessions enjoyed a pre-packaged lunch at socially distanced tables in the Youth Farm Bible Camp Quonset hut. (Photo by Emily Summach)
Gordon Peters (left) and Ernie Epp bring their “voices together” at morning worship. (Photo by Emily Summach)
Mennonite Church Saskatchewan held its 2022 annual delegate session (ADS) as a hybrid event, allowing for both in-person and virtual attendance. Delegates met at the Youth Farm Bible Camp just south of Rosthern, Sask., on March 12.
A Mennonite farm in Cuauhtémoc, Mexico. (Pixabay photo by photo_spider)
There are about a hundred Mexican Mennonite families currently living in the Niagara Region.
MDS volunteer Mike Davis, left, presents the repaired banjo to Wesley Emmelot. (MDS Canada photo)
Wesley Emmelot and his wife, Maureen Parsley, lost almost everything when the Tulameen River overflowed its banks in the town of Princeton, B.C., in mid-November 2021.
“There was a foot of water in the house, and the basement was filled with water and mud,” Emmelot said.
In 2007, founders of MCC’s network of thrift stores (from left) Linie Friesen, Selma Loewen, Susan Giesbrecht and Sara Stoesz, gathered at a celebration in Winnipeg, Man., to recognize their contributions to MCC. (MCC photo/Gladys Terichow)
In November 1975, Mary Thiessen displays items at a thrift store in Clearbook, B.C. (MCC photo)
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is celebrating 50 years of thrifting with the anniversary of the opening of the first MCC Thrift shop in 1972. The MCC Thrift network provides financial support for the work of MCC around the world. Over the last 50 years, MCC Thrift shops have contributed over $305 million to help people in need.
Werner De Jong enjoys coffee with his students. (Photo courtesy of Joanne De Jong)
After a number of delays, Werner and Joanne De Jong arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in mid-January in order to begin their work as Mennonite Church Canada International Witness workers at the Meserete Kristos Seminary (MKS). The road has been rocky for the couple, as they navigate restrictions, visas and an encroaching civil war.
Jared Falk created a Low German version of Wordle, the newest word puzzle craze racing around the world. (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe)
You may have just done a double take, but no, this is not a Daily Bonnet article. A Manitoba Mennonite really did create a Low German version of Wordle, a word puzzle craze whose popularity skyrocketed in December 2021.
