WiderChurch 8-12

Akron, Pa.

Photo: Two orphaned Sudanese boys and their uncle arrived in Winnipeg on April 9, assisted by Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba. They are living with Henry and Bettie Bergen of North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church. At the airport, from left: Henry Bergen, Walter Thiessen, Monynuer Monywach Daw (age 13), James Bilen Monywach Daw (15), Gew Mony Buony Ater (20), and Mukai Muza and Ionka Hristozova of MCC.

As reports of massive suffering and slaughter emerge from the Darfur region of western Sudan, church leaders who partner with Mennonite Central Committee are requesting prayer and advocacy.

While the Sudanese government has been battling southern Sudan rebels for decades, violence in Darfur is more recent. The conflict pits militias from the area’s Arab herders against the farmers of black African origin. Both groups are Muslim.

Tension over scarce land and water resources has long been high. African villagers demanded that the government stop favouring Arabs. In response, the Arab militias are attacking villages, killing thousands of civilians and driving a million people from their homes.

Jan Egeland, a United Nations official, has described the conflict as “ethnic cleansing.” Militiamen are employing mass rape, burning villages to the ground and destroying crops, he said.

Harold Miller of MCC Sudan recently heard eye-witness reports during meetings with agencies active in Darfur. A member of the Sudanese parliament confirmed that “genocide and gross human rights violations” are occurring in Darfur.

The Sudanese government denies that it is supporting the Arab militias. Until recently, humanitarian groups and reporters were denied access to the region due to government restrictions.

Meanwhile, peace negotiations continue between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the southern rebel army. Fear of jeopardizing this peace process has left some international leaders hesitant to speak out against abuses in Darfur. Sudan’s civil war has claimed two million lives in the past two decades, and driven more than one million into exile.

A statement from the Sudan Council of Churches calls on Christians all over the world to “pray and advocate for the suffering people of Darfur so that God may give them peace.”

Bill Janzen of MCC’s Ottawa Office joined with representatives of other agencies in signing a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin.

“It has been 10 years since the genocide in Rwanda and many Canadians are still tormented by the international community’s lack of concern and response to the early warnings of mass killings,” the letter states. “Humanity cannot afford to repeat these mistakes in Sudan.”

MCC is exploring options for providing food and relief supplies in neighbouring Chad, where some 120,000 to 160,000 people from Darfur have taken refuge. Only seven percent of these refugees, mostly women and children, are living in protected camps; the rest are foraging for themselves in the countryside.—From MCC release

Winnipeg, Man.

Rebecca Yoder Neufeld from Waterloo, Ontario, has been named Mennonite Church Canada’s missional formation and congregational partnership facilitator for Eastern Canada.

In her half-time job, Yoder Neufeld will invite MC Canada congregations to connect with missional church ideas and with partners in the global church. The organized church is important to international church partnerships, said Yoder Neufeld.

“To be visible and incarnated [the church] needs to be organized in a way that allows it to do its work, that allows it to use the gifts of people.” It’s crucial for the church to have a corporate life, to be an organic community, not just “a program that individuals drop in on,” she said.

Through church-to-church partnerships around the world, congregations in vastly different cultures can begin to grasp the challenges and tensions of living a faithful Christian life.

Yoder Neufeld has plenty of international experience to draw from. A childhood in France and later French studies provided her with ability in that language. As a young adult in Argentina, she became fluent in Spanish. She has also lived in Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Jerusalem, Guatemala and the United States.

She has taught theology in Latin America, and English as a second language in the U.S. and Canada, and has done immigration and paralegal work with Central American, Mexican and Puerto Rican people. She organized translation services at the Mennonite World Conference assembly in Zimbabwe.

Yoder Neufeld has a master of divinity degree from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary and a master’s degree with specialization in bilingual education.

But Yoder Neufeld says she was most transformed during her role as pastor of the Spanish-speaking congregation at First Mennonite Church in Kitchener. There she was able to integrate her training and international experience to help break down cultural barriers within the church.

Her new job with MC Canada will allow her to extend her transformation experience to others.

“I’m very much a teacher at heart, and the opportunity to work with congregations is attractive, as is the part of the job that has to do with making connections and partnerships between the global church and local congregations,” she said.

She succeeds Jim Loepp-Thiessen, who has been working in that role for the past two years.

Rebecca is married to Tom Yoder Neufeld. They have two teenage children, David and Miriam.—From MC Canada release

Montreal, P.Q.

Photo: Harmonie participants, from left: Christina Horst from Stratford, Ontario; Jean Calvin Kitata, theology instructor; Garrett Zehr from Tavistock, Ontario; Nicole Cober Bauman from Shakespeare, Ontario; Karim Traore from Burkina Faso; Cornelia Kocker from Switzerland.

Nineteen-year-old Nicole Cober Bauman didn’t realize the extent to which Harmonie, a Mennonite Central Committee cross-cultural youth program here, would open her eyes to the needs of the world.

“It’s shown me how much more there is to discover,” said Bauman.

Harmonie is an MCC Quebec initiative that promotes relationship building among French-speaking youth between the ages of 18 and 24. For eight months, from September through May, participants share their musical talents, study theology and work for local community organizations.

The experience encourages them to use their gifts, discover the relevance of their Christian faith and meet the marginalized of society. Participants spend at least 16 hours a week working with refugees, the homeless and poor.

Bauman was one of three participants from Ontario. The other two were from Switzerland and Burkina Faso.

Bauman provided administrative services at Refuge Juan Moreno, a Catholic-run agency. Here she met people from a variety of countries, including China, Congo and Afghanistan. Many had left everything behind.

Some afternoons we would just sit and get to know each other, she said. Three mornings a week were spent singing and practising their instruments. They shared their music with people in prisons, churches and nursing homes.

For many Harmonie participants, it was a first experience living away from home. Bauman noticed how small events could create conflict. They couldn’t always agree on the grocery list, or the difference between a basic and luxury item. Eventually, we came to an understanding, said Bauman.

“It can be a challenge to spend eight months living and working with people you’ve never met,” said Annie Brosseau, Harmonie coordinator and MCC Quebec co-representative. “We had a good group of young people to work with. I think it was good for all of us.”—From MCC report by Jonathan Tiessen

Eritrea

Don’t pray that the persecution will stop, Eritrean Christians recently told an American missionary. Instead, “Pray that we will be strong.”

The missionary visited Eritrea in April to learn how believers with ties to Mennonites are faring in the current situation. It’s been 12 years since Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia, and 2 years since many churches were “deregistered.”

The Eritrean government maintains that it has not closed churches; church offices, in fact, are allowed to remain open. However, Christians who meet to worship and pray are likely to be arrested. The government views them as extremists—a Christian equivalent to Muslim fundamentalists.

Over 350 Christians are being held, many in shipping containers in tropical heat.

“We want you to tell the world about us,” they said. They cautioned against using names. The missionary experienced something of the danger as he accompanied leaders to prayer meetings.

“We went from house to house after dark. Doors were locked and lights were turned out for secrecy. It was like nothing else I have ever experienced,” he said.

“Up to 18 people would pack into a small room. The order of service started with about one hour of prayer for personal repentance, followed by repentance for the nation and prayer for the infilling of the Holy Spirit and power to resist evil. A teaching followed, and then another hour of prayer, before moving to another area and home to start the same process over.

“At times, when someone knocked on the door, people seemed a bit anxious. The believers left two by two over a period of about a half hour, to avoid the appearance of a large gathering.”

Persecuted groups maintain denominational identities but cooperate freely. Orthodox, Catholic and Evangelical Lutheran churches are not under legal restrictions.—From Eastern Mennonite Missions release

Winnipeg, Man.

On May 26, the Mennonite Heritage Centre launched a web site that tells the story of the 10,000 Canadians who said “no” to fighting in World War II—and chose an alternative.

They became known as conscientious objectors (COs). A majority were Mennonite. From 1941 to 1946, they built roads and bridges, fought fires, taught school, mined, logged, farmed, and worked in manufacturing and medicine. By law, most of their earnings went to the Red Cross for relief work.

Their stand was not popular. Some of their churches were vandalized or torched. Some went to prison for refusing to wear a military uniform. Their time had a profound impact on them, their communities and the country, but their story has been little more than a reference in the public record.

At www.alternativeservice.ca, visitors can hear the stories through letters, interviews, photographs, audio recordings, historical documents and archival film clips. The content converges with curriculum that Manitoba students study from grades four to eleven. Lesson ideas for teachers are included.

Creators hope that the web site will help people see service as an honourable alternative to war.

The Mennonite Heritage Centre received financial support from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canadian Council of Archives, as well as Mennonite organizations and private donors.—From MC Canada release

Jerusalem, Israel

The title of an April 14-18 conference here was “Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, politics and the Palesine-Israel conflict.” It was sponsored by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center here, an organization supported by Mennonite Central Committee.

Mennonite World Conference participants were Mario Higueros from Guatemala, Albert Ndlovu from Zimbabwe, and Pastor Romero from Belize.

Higueros, a pastor who teaches at the Mennonite seminary, SEMILLA, came to the conference out of concern about the “very aggressive development” of Zionism in churches in Guatemala, “especially in Mennonite congregations.”

Romero sees the church in Central America heavily but unwittingly influenced by Christian Zionism. He is a Bible teacher and board president of SEMILLA.

Ndlovu said he had “been dying to get this kind of opportunity to walk around here [the Holy Land].” The issue is pertinent to him as a Brethren in Christ pastor and member of a peace and justice committee.

The conference included sessions in Ramallah because Israeli policy makes Jerusalem inaccessible to most Palestinians in the West Bank. The Mennonites visited areas affected by the “separation” wall and fence system in the West Bank.

“Now that Israelis will have taken so much for themselves, they will ‘need to’ protect it,” worried Ndlovu. “Israel is building prisons for itself.”

Higueros was touched by the story of a Palestinian mother who brought her sick child to the separation fence to get to a doctor. The soldier at the gate would not let her through. A doctor had to come to examine the child as best he could from the other side of the gate.

Romero found hope in places such as the Bethlehem Bible College.

“It was enlightening to see firsthand the implications the movement [Zionism] has for real people’s lives,” he said. The sessions on nonviolence in the struggle for justice were of most help to Ndlovu.

“One does not embark on the path of nonviolence unless one is ready to lay down one’s life for it,” he said. Romero appreciated Sabeel’s willingness to do politically risky things, “living and constructing relevant theology in its own context.”

Higueros noted that he and Romero feel equipped to present what they gleaned from the conference and saw firsthand, as they seek to help their church communities live faithfully.—From MWC/MCC release by Ed Nyce