Graduations at Canadian Mennonite University

Sixty-four students received bachelor’s degrees in the arts, music, church ministries, and church music during Canadian Mennonite University’s sixth annual commencement exercises, held at Portage Ave. MB Church, Winnipeg, on Apr. 23. Speaker Tom Yoder Neufeld encouraged the grads to be rooted in faith as they “leave one place and go to another,” for “our age is marked by rootlessness.” Commencement week included a fund-raising dinner with Dr. Henry Friesen, medical researcher and distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba, and a baccalaureate address by Gerry Ediger, CMU professor of Christian History.

They spent eight months living in places like northwestern Ontario, the Rocky Mountains, Guatemala, and South Africa. They planted gardens, built houses, played with children, and had their hearts broken by the poverty many people live with every day. On Apr. 8, 95 participants in this year’s Outtatown Discipleship School (a program of Canadian Mennonite University) celebrated their experiences and received graduation certificates. “This is the beginning of interpreting their new experience at home, as they think of what God wants them to do and be now,” director Paul Kroeker told relatives and friends who had gathered. “They have returned home as changed people.”

—CMU releases