These Brazil students are part of a younger group of students who have become involved in a garden club, set up by MCC worker Julie Alexander. The club is a mix of ages and encourages students to develop leadership skills while working together as a team. --Photo by Lowell Brown
Twenty-four Canadians were among the nearly 100 new workers assigned by Mennonite Central Committee recently
Dr. Sue Johnson does pre-conference training.
“Conversations on Attachment: Integrating the Science of Love and Spirituality,” will be held March 31-April 1, 2011, at Eastern Mennonite University. The conference, a first of its kind, will bring together nationally-recognized experts from a variety of disciplines to apply key insights from attachment theory to current research and practice.
Jeremy Bauman
Jeremy Bauman of Kitchener, in Year 3 at Wilifred Laurier University, has received a $3,500 Abner Martin Music Scholarship for 2010/11, announces Menno Singers, a community choir in the Waterloo Region of Ontario. Working towards a bachelor of music degree in Music Performance on Viola, Bauman is studying with Christine Vlajk of the Penderecki String Quartet.
Mike Miller
Mike Miller, of Partridge, KS, has been named regional director of Resource Development for MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates). He will represent MEDA in the US Mid-West region from his home office in a small town northwest of Wichita.
Christians involved in church-based gender justice movements say that men must develop a sense of positive masculinity in order to counter increasing levels of violence by men against women.
At the site of the Philippines' contested TVI Pacific mine, owned by a Canadian company. (Photo: KAIROS)
KAIROS is deeply disappointed by the defeat of Bill C-300 at its third reading in the House of Commons, according its recent newsletterThe private member’s bill, which would have created new mechanisms to hold Canadian mining, oil and gas companies accountable when they are found to be complicit in human rights and environmental violations abroad, was narrowly defeated by a vote of 140 to 134.
Richard Showalter
Richard Showalter has resigned as president of Eastern Mennonite Missions (EMM), effective in the fall of 2011. EMM Board Chair Joe Sherer says “Richard has been a strong and visionary leader with a passion to see the gospel go to areas without a Christian witness.”
Ying Ying Wang from China and Santiago Gomez of Colombia at the Remembrance Day service. (Photo courtesy Terry Pugh, Clark's Crossing Gazette)
Two participants in MCC’s International Volunteer Exchange Program stood before a crowd of 600 people
Jacob Friesen is one of the first teachers to use a new teaching resource published by MCC Bolivia.
Students attending one-room village schools in this Mennonite colony 60 kilometres south of Santa Cruz use slates instead of notebooks.
Reuters – Pope Benedict XVI waves at the end of the Consistory ceremony in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican.
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has opened the door on the previously taboo subject of condoms as a way to fight HIV, saying male prostitutes who use condoms may be beginning to act responsibly. It's a stunning comment for a pontiff who has blamed condoms for making the AIDS crisis worse.
Rudy Wiebe signs copies of Collected Stories/1955-2010 at a Nov. 10 book launch.
Canadian literary legend, Rudy Wiebe and his wife Tena, have supported the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers since it began in the 1980s. “Refugees have always been of particular concern to me, because in 1930, before I was born, Canada accepted my parents and their five children as refugees from the Soviet Union.” Wiebe said.
Dr. Luis Lugo
A vast majority of Africans are very accepting of people from other faiths, Dr. Luis Lugo of the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, told the first forum sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Religion and Peace at Conrad Grebel University College.
MPN’S Sunday school curriculum, currently includes tips for teachers and a downloadable Power Point presentation about how to use the curriculum.
What will Sunday school look like in the future for Mennonite Church USA and Mennonite Church Canada congregations? That was the question addressed at a consultation organized by Mennonite Publishing Network (MPN) earlier this month.
The consultation, held Nov. 1-3 at Amigo Centre, Sturgis, MI, brought together Christian education leaders and thinkers throughout MC USA and MC Canada.
John Longhurst
John Longhurst, of Winnipeg, has been appointed director of resources and public engagement with
Geez! Has it been five years already?
It was 2005 when Aiden Enns launched Geez, a self-described “cheeky” magazine for the “over-churched, out-churched, un-churched and maybe even the un-churchable.”
Pak Samuel lost his wife, who was seven months pregnant, his small son and daughter in the flash flooding that crashed through the village of Rado in Papua, Indonesia. He is sitting on the rocks where his home used to stand. (MCC photo by Paulus Hortono)
In Java, Indonesia, palm trees fold like umbrellas under the weight of volcanic ash spewing from Mount Merapi. On the outskirts of this black and white world, more than 380,000 people are waiting to see if anything is left of their homes and their livelihoods when the volcano finally stops erupting.
The newest distance learning course offered at Eastern Mennonite Seminary will help students integrate faith perspectives into communication theory while sharpening their skills in this arena.
“We are most like God because of our ability to communicate,”
Elder Xiao Hui-Ying of the Zhong-He Mennonite Church in Taipei, sticks a fruit on the wishing tree.
At their annual assembly held in Taipei Oct. 31-Nov. 3, pastors and delegates from Taiwan’s 21 Mennonite churches
Faced with a shortage of volunteers willing to fill leadership positions, the committee that organizes the popular and successful Winnipeg MCC Festival and Relief Sale has dissolved.
Each year in June, the sale brought together about 3,000 people and contributed close to $100,000 for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) programs.
Ken Warkentin
Ken Warkentin, pastor of the Niverville Community Fellowship, has been named the new executive director
Yemiru Tilahun (far right), of Ethiopia’s Meserete Kristos Church, with two leaders of Ethiopian evangelicals, the Emmanuel United Church of Ethiopia, Samson Mariam (left), Emmanuel vice-president and Bezalem Fisseha (centre), president, who were mentored by Meserete Kristos leaders.
At least 30 mission and church leaders represented Anabaptist-related communities at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization here, October 17 to 24. The gathering, which attracted 4,000 mission leaders, pastors, and academics from 198 countries, grew out of the “Lausanne Movement” that followed the first congress in Switzerland, in1974.
Mennonite Savings and Credit Union (MSCU) has been named among the Top 50 Best Small and Medium Employers in Canada for the second consecutive year, moving to 19th from our debut at 47th last year. The 2011 list will be published in the Nov. 8, 2010 issue of Maclean’s magazine, available on newsstands Oct. 28th.
Nathan Funk, associate professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, is the centre's lead researcher.
Conrad Grebel University College has just established The Centre for the Study of Religion and Peace (CSRP) to "advance knowledge and awareness of religious contributions to peace, and to enhance the capacity of religious communities to engage contemporary conflict issues and practice the peaceful values they profess.”
Leonard Gerbrandt
Assisting with autumn cleanup and yard maintenance at one's church is a common activity for many MAX members. On Oct. 16, this annual activity turned tragic for Leonard Gerbrandt, 69, a long term, faithful member of the Ottawa Mennonite Church, Ottawa, Ontario.
Followup included preparation of a study book, the initiation of a world day of prayer for Latin American Anabaptist women, and the declaration of a decade to work to change situations of family violence and the devaluing of leadership of women in the churches.
A sense of solidarity and fellowship took a leap forward September 6 to 8, at the third
