People & events

More than a thousand recipes have poured in for consideration for Mennonite Central Committee’s new cookbook, Simply in Season, but the authors are still seeking submissions, especially for fall and winter recipes. The cookbook will focus on locally produced, seasonal foods. Recipes can be sent online.

—MCC

Refresh, a day for ministry leaders, is coming to B.C. on Oct. 29, at North Langley Community Church. The B.C. MB Conference is holding the event in partnership with Discipleship Ministries of the Canadian MB Conference. Garry Schmidt of Northview Community Church, Abbotsford, currently writing a thesis on providing care for pastoral leadership, will instruct on tools for deepening one’s relationship with Jesus. More information at bcmb.org or 1-888-669-6575 x 398.

—Discipleship Ministries

Darrel Reid, Focus on the Family Canada’s 4th president, resigned his post mid-August after serving since 1998. He is moving into private sector executive work. Reid’s tenure was marked by organizational growth and his passion for strengthening families. Terence Rolston has been appointed president while the Board of Directors determines Reid’s replacement.

—Focus on the Family

Four days of canning (above) by 550 volunteers from 32 churches in Leamington, Ont. last April yielded 14,400 cans of turkey for Mennonite Central Committee. The MCC’s mobile meat canner parked at the HJ Heinz Co. tomato grading station for the 4-day blitz. Volunteers had raised $65,000 in fundraisers to cover costs, from buying the turkey to shipping the finished cans to their (still unknown) destination.

—Leamington Committee

The first ever conference of African Historic Peace Churches was held in Nairobi, Kenya Aug. 8–13. Delegates heard painful stories of the church living amidst violence in countries like Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Congo and Sudan, as well as good stories of achieving reconciliation in Burkina Faso and Rwanda. Discussion indicated that a peace church identity is being forged within situations of testing and struggle.

—MCC Peace Office

Phase of life partner (Lebensabschnittpartner) is a new popular term in Austria, say MB Mission and Service International missionaries Richard and Hazel Funk. It implies that new partners are found for new phases of life. No one seems to talk about “all the baggage” carried along into the next phase, however; they request prayer for wisdom in responding to those with broken relationships.

—Funk prayer letter

A new name is on the agenda of the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists (CGSB). Feeling that the American implications of “Southern” are an impediment in Canada, delegates to this summer’s annual meeting asked for a study and proposal on the matter by next year. Growth has been strong in spite of the name, however, with a record 37 new church plants in 2003, for a total of 220 CCSB churches.

—ChristianWeek

Re-admitted: South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), which broke with most other churches over apartheid in the 1960s, has been returned to full membership in the South African Council of Churches. Church of most Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, the DRC earlier provided a theological justification for apartheid but has since rejected it as “wrong and sinful.”

—Christian Courier

A Christian pledge of allegiance for Americans who want alternative wording has been drafted by Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary professors June Alliman Yoder and J. Nelson Kraybill. It follows the cadences of the pledge to the flag and reads: “I pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ, And to God’s kingdom for which he died – One Spirit-led people the world over, indivisible, With love and justice for all.”

—The Mennonite

In Ukraine, depression has often been denounced as a sin by church teachings. A women’s conference on depression, conflict and related issues, organized by Mennonite Central Committee and Evangelical Christian Baptist churches, was held in Zaporozhye last June. It encouraged compassionate response rather than judgment.

—MCC

The first workshop on youth issues since the 2003 Global Youth Summit in Zimbabwe was held in Jakarta, Indonesia May 29. More than 60 Indonesian church leaders addressed challenges youth had identified such as communication gaps between generations, lack of teaching on basics, impracticality of the church, and the church’s trend to become an exclusive group.

—Mennonite World Conference

Children taking care of children is no longer an uncommon sight in Chad, a country of 9 million where the AIDS rate has doubled in the past 2 years to an estimated 8 percent. Above, Sahba, 19, takes care of his sister Irin, 4, after their parents died of AIDS in the village of Pala. Mennonite Central Committee is working with several organizations and churches in Chad who care for orphans; it is flooded with requests for aid.

—MCC

Fourteen young adults from Central Heights Church, Abbotsford, spent nearly 3 weeks in Chonburi, Thailand this summer, assisting the MB Mission and Service International team there. Wearing red T-shirts wherever they went, they worked at an orphanage, did house renovations, put on a carnival and presented Jesus in a high school assembly of 1000 students. “They amazed us,” one missionary commented.

—Team 2000 letters

Fighting mosquitoes: Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) has received a two-year $9.1 million Cdn contract from the government of Tanzania to expand its war against mosquitoes and malaria. MEDA will be the logistics contractor for the new Tanzania National Voucher Scheme, which aims to make insecticide-treated mosquito nets affordable to low income families. Malaria kills some two million Africans every year.

—MEDA

Aid for Sudan: Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is preparing $6.1 million in aid for victims of violence in western and central Sudan. A major part will be a 4,500 metric tonne food shipment via the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. MCC is appealing to its supporters for blankets and school kits for Darfur, as well as cash donations to purchase survival kits and durable shelters, as well as to provide trauma training for school teachers.

—MCC