Eva Klaassen
Eva Klaassen lives in a seniors housing complex in Prince Albert. She doesn’t own a car, so every Sunday morning she takes a taxi to Grace Mennonite Church. Many of the drivers are new to Canada, she says, but all are very friendly.
Doug Klassen
On Nov. 4, tears and well wishes were intermingled at Foothills Mennonite Church in Calgary when Pastor Doug Klassen told his congregation that he had accepted Mennonite Church Canada’s call to the position of executive minister.
At the farewell celebration on Oct 21, 2018, Ken Warkentin, the executive director of Mennonite Church Manitoba, presents outgoing executive director Willard Metzger with a gift from the Executive Staff Group of MC Canada. (Photo by D. Michael Hostetler)
(Photo by D. Michael Hostetler)
(Photo by D. Michael Hostetler)
A farewell celebration was on the agenda for the Mennonite Church Canada Joint Council and Executive Staff Group, that were both meeting over the weekend of Oct 21, 2018. Along with other friends and well-wishers, they gathered at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg to thank Willard Metzger for his years of service as executive minister of MC Canada.
Linda Dickinson, MCC Alberta’s material resources coordinator, presents Simon Eng with a cake honouring his achievement in packing 35,000 school kits over the past 12 years. ‘I may not have much, but I have my hands,’ is something he has said many times over the years. (MCC Alberta photo)
Every Tuesday, the bell at the front desk of the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Alberta headquarters in Calgary dings incessantly, whether a receptionist is sitting there or not. “Hi, Simon!” someone says, and Simon wanders off to get a coffee and a snack, and then he ambles down the hall to the material resources warehouse.
Oliver Heppner working the garden that he loved. (Photo courtesy of Ruth Heppner)
Oliver Heppner was born on Feb. 11, 1929, to Cornelius and Gertrude Heppner, the fourth of their six children. In a written reflection on his early life, he said, “I search my past to try to find strands of events constituting the fabric of my faith and life journey. If there is a warp and woof comprising my patchwork quilt of faith, I sense the two components would be love and trust.”
Dave Rogalsky served as Canadian Mennonite's Eastern Canada correspondent for 12 years. He covered news from Ontario, Quebec and the eastern provinces.
Over the past 12 years, Dave Rogalsky has been a prolific writer for Canadian Mennonite. Since the summer of 2006, when he was hired as the Eastern Canada correspondent, replacing Maurice Martin, Rogalsky has written a total of 868 articles. That is an average of 71 articles per year and nearly three articles per issue.
Sandra Luna assists Jimmi Bedoya, 3, at Centro de Capacitación del Niño (Children’s Training Centre) in El Progreso, Soacha, outside Bogotá, Colombia, where Luna teaches Grade 1 and acts as one of the coordinators of the school. (MCC photo by Colin Vandenberg)
I was born in Santander in north-central Colombia. My husband and I married when he was 17 and I was 15, and we decided to come to Bogotá to look for a better life.
Jennifer Symonds
On the weekend of May 11, Jennifer Symonds, a participant at the Westview Centre4Women, shared her story as part of a conference hosted by the Niagara churches of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada. Held at Westview Christian Fellowship in St.
Wilbur Sargunaraj gets the audience up and moving at the Spruce River Folk Festival. (Photo by Donna Schulz)
The Spruce River Folk Festival is held annually at Ray Funk’s farm north of Prince Albert. Mennonite Church Saskatchewan and Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Saskatchewan help sponsor the event, which raises awareness of, and support for, landless Indigenous bands, in particular the Young Chippewayan First Nation.
Melita Penner (left) and her daughter, Denelda Fast, cook at Shekinah each summer. (Photo by Craig Friesen)
Rollkuchen dough, ready for the fryer. (Photo courtesy of Melita Penner)
Every summer Melita Penner and her daughter, Denelda Fast, spend a week cooking for summer camp at Shekinah Retreat Centre, north of Waldheim, Sask. They’ve been doing it for 15 years.
Walter Unger
Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, B.C., is remembering its former president, Walter (Wally) Unger, who died May 9 at the age of 81 in hospice care in Abbotsford.
Urie A. Bender
For his funeral text, Urie Bender chose the passage from II Corinthians 4:7: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” (KJV).
Esther Kern (Photo by Murray Lumley)
Award winner Esther Kern, with CPT reservist Cathy McLean on the left and former co-Director of CPT Doug Pritchard on the right. (Photo by Murray Lumley)
Esther Kern, a former Canada coordinator of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), received the Muriel Duckworth Award for Peace Activism at the Voice of Women for Peace International Women’s Day dinner held at Friend’s (Quaker) House in Toronto on March 8, 2018.
Mural of Oscar Romero, in this case with Rutilio Grande, are common in El Salvador. (Photo by Will Braun)
I find the Catholic process of declaring saints un-Anabaptist and weird—especially the part about verifying miracles–but the Vatican’s latest candidate for sainthood is someone who has shaped my Mennonite faith.
Esther Patkau would likely not have considered herself a remarkable woman, yet she lived a remarkable life. Born on Aug. 23, 1927, near Hanley, Sask., she knew at the tender age of four that she wanted to be a missionary. She never wavered from that goal.
films that document the lives of Mennonites. (Photo courtesy of Ken Reddig)
Sarah Ens earned an honourable mention in CV2’s 2017 Young Buck Poetry Prize competition. (Photo by Nicolien Klassen-Wiebe)
Sarah Ens’s cat, Balto, is the inspiration behind her poetry that appears on Instagram @balto_thesleddog. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Ens)
Sarah Ens’s writing career started at the age of six with a story suspiciously similar to the children’s book, Julie and the Wolves. But since those early days, she has grown into an award-winning poet.
Ed Zacharias (Plautdietsch Medienkonferenz photo)
De Bibel
Ed Zacharias started with Exodus, translating word by word into Low German (Plautdietsch). For a decade he worked at it, sometimes with institutional backing, sometimes as a volunteer hunkered in his home office, relying on help from interested Wycliffe personnel and a loose network of Low German promoters.
A page from a Jehovah’s Witness Bible study booklet in Low German.
While some might see Low German as the arcane language of people stuck in the past, Jehovah’s Witnesses have embraced it. For years, they have dedicated considerable energy to learning the language, translating materials and reaching out to Low German-speaking peoples.
Ralph Lebold
Born into a Western Ontario Mennonite Conference (WOM)—formerly the Amish Mennonite Conference of Ontario—family, Ralph Lebold grew up with strong leaders in a congregational polity. Each congregation had a bishop, minister and deacon working together, although with separate roles.
Brandon Leis, the new music director for Menno Singers, in his studio in the Music Building at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont. (Photo by Dave Rogalsky)
Brandon Leis, the new music director for Menno Singers, holds up a piece of art he created. The church, founded on sacred music and filled with it, exudes music through the cross on the steeple. Or is it receiving heavenly inspiration through the cross and being filled with spiritual music? Or maybe both. Only visible when held up to the light are the Alpha and Omega, God’s beginning and end. The piece hangs over his desk—and coffee maker—in his studio in the Music Building at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. (Photo by Dave Rogalsky)
Like most musicians and artists, Brandon Leis uses his gifts in many places and in many ways to make a living.
Cheryl Braun
After 23 good years as a teacher and principal, Cheryl Braun asked herself a simple question: “What does the last part of my career look like?” Would she stay the course or risk change?
As Braun (no relation to the author) considered this over several months with a small support group, she eventually asked herself, “If I’m going to make a change, why not explore a big change?”
A large group of family members and friends gathered in Markham, Ont., on March 18 to remember the life of Harold Reesor, who died at the age of 86, six days previous. Although his early and later years were lived in the Markham/Stouffville area, where his Reesor ancestors settled 200 years ago, he lived in Quebec for more than four decades, working as a mission worker and farmer.
Tributes and testimonials in honour of Alan F. Kreider, Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) professor emeritus of church history and mission, and a long-time mission worker in England, have been pouring in via the seminary’s Facebook page and alumni Facebook group since his death on May 8, 2017.
Some might wonder about a Mennonite elder running public events about Hogwarts, a school for witches and wizards. But Nathan Swartz of Kingsfield-Clinton Mennonite Church in southwestern Ontario has thought about this deeply.
