Volume 16, Number 12
A green heritage
Jane Snyder enjoys a cup of coffee at the Seven Shores Urban Market and Café in Uptown Waterloo.
Jane Snyder chose the local Seven Shores Urban Market and Café in Uptown Waterloo to meet. Within walking distance of her home, and featuring local produce and fair trade coffee, it met many of the principles to which she, her husband, parents and work hold.
Something new under the sun
Erb Street Mennonite Church, Waterloo, Ont., had new solar panels installed last month.
Solar electric panels at Hillcrest Mennonite Church, New Hamburg, Ont. (2011).
There’s nothing new under the sun, the writer of Ecclesiastes tells us, but in Waterloo Region, Ont., there are lots of new things under the sun: solar projects, that is!
More superheroes . . . or a Saviour?
When an army of nasty aliens in giant reptilian ships threatens to take over the Earth and enslave all of its inhabitants, one superhero is not enough to stand in the way. For a threat of this magnitude, a group of six very diverse superheroes is called for, a group calling itself The Avengers, the title of what is already one of the biggest blockbuster films of all time.
The heart of a servant
Dale Schiele sees value and worth in that segment of society that most people would rather shun. At age 60, he’ll be retiring from a 30-year career as director of Person to Person (P2P), a volunteer-based prison ministry in Saskatchewan.
‘You have blessed us’
Nick Blais of Fort Erie, Ont., right, and other MDS volunteers work in New Orleans, La., in January.
After spending seven years and $8 million responding along the Gulf Coast to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) has formally closed its last project in the region. About 70 MDS personnel, Mennonite leaders and local pastors, disaster response workers and community members gathered on May 16 at MDS headquarters in New Orleans for a commemoration ceremony.
Manigotagan Community Fellowship thriving
Norman Meade divides his time between co-pastoral duties at Manigotagan Community Fellowship and his work as coordinator of Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba’s Aboriginal Neighbours Program.
Manigotagan Community Fellowship is thriving nine years after budget restraints led to the cutting of Mennonite Church Canada’s Native Ministry program.
Migrant church grows new roots
Christuskirche Niedernberg members—Jenny Spenst, 24, left, Tatjana Hagelgans, 23, Alexander Spenst, 49 (Jenny’s father-in-law and one of three church elders), and Johann Siemens, 23—enjoy a sunny day after the Sunday morning worship service on May 20 in Niedernberg, Germany.
Jenny Spenst is fascinated by her parents’ stories of life in the Soviet Union.
Migrant church grows new roots
Christuskirche Niedernberg members—Jenny Spenst, 24, left, Tatjana Hagelgans, 23, Alexander Spenst, 49 (Jenny’s father-in-law and one of three church elders), and Johann Siemens, 23—enjoy a sunny day after the Sunday morning worship service on May 20 in Niedernberg, Germany.
Jenny Spenst is fascinated by her parents’ stories of life in the Soviet Union.
Church is . . .
Every Sunday evening our church hosts a community dinner. The peculiar mix of human diversity and dysfunction is beautiful. They are, in a word, authentic. What you see is what you get.
Reflections at the close of a ministry
Twelve years ago, on beginning as conference minister of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, I described a painting of a small boat on a large body of water with these words inscribed below: “How frail my craft; how vast yon sea.”
Readers write
Intimate worship part of Mennonite DNA
‘This land is us’
Jacinto Perez, a community leader in Nebaj, Guatemala, spearheads the resistance against hydroelectric dams on ancestral lands.
A typical street scene in Nebaj, Guatemala.
For five years I lived and worked in the outskirts of San Salvador, El Salvador, with an organization supporting marginalized families living with HIV/AIDS. Although the agonizing combination of poverty and HIV formed a part of my daily experience, AIDS was not the main epidemic that surrounded my life.
Dusty Bibles?
Dusting off our Bibles for assembly?
If indeed they are dusty, something has gone wrong for the people of the Book.
