John Schrag was a prosperous Mennonite farmer who lived Harvey County, Kansas. He was a member of the Hoffnungsfeld (Hopefield) Mennonite Church. In 1917 when the United States went to war against Germany, Schrag refused to buy bonds to help pay for the war. Many Mennonites reasoned that war bonds were like taxes. Payment could Keep Reading…
The following excerpt is taken from Vincent Ndandula and Jim Bertsche, “An open Bible at rebel headquarters,” in The Jesus Tribe: Grace stories from Congo’s Mennonites, 1912-2012 ed. Rod Hollinger-Janzen, Nancy Myers and Jim Bertsche (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2012): 82-87. Co-published with the Institute for the Study of Global Anabaptism. By the Keep Reading…
This story of the Binh Thanh congregation in Ho Chi Minh City (then Saigon) begins in the weeks following the People’s Revolutionary Army’s takeover on April 30, 1975. The following excerpts are taken from: Luke Martin, Nguyen Quang Trung, Nguyen Thanh Tam and Nguyen Thi Tham, “The Mennonite Church in Vietnam,” in Churches Engage Asian Keep Reading…
In 1948 the assassination of Liberal political candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán touched off a ten-year civil war in Colombia. In nearly the same year, Colombians joined with Mennonite missionaries to form the first Colombian Mennonite congregations. But the civil war cast a long shadow over the church’s early years. Because Protestantism was seen as a Keep Reading…
Gjorgje Nikolic wrote well. He loved to write, and with a job for a paper like Belgrade’s Politika, just after World War I, he had great opportunities. With the opportunities came a deeply troubling experience. In the fall of 1926 the reporting manager of Politika sent him to observe a strange case before the Danube Keep Reading…
Pour français cliquez ici Esther Mbombo wa Tshipongo was a strong and generous woman, whose dedication to the church sometimes made her an object of criticism and conflict. Someone who knew her says, “Her only response was to suppress her tears and devote herself to reconciliation, even if she wasn’t at fault.” Many people remember Keep Reading…
What do you talk about when you’re buried up to your neck in the earth, surrounded by the handful of scruffy guerillas who put you there? When Kasai Kapata was in that position he spoke up with, “Comrades, it’s a good thing that I am here in this grave.” “They thought I was crazy to Keep Reading…
The story of David Klassen, a Mennonite Brethren church leader in the USSR who was imprisoned three separate times between 1936 and 1965, is an inspiring account of faithfulness in the face of overwhelming opposition. How did he and other Mennonite Brethren in Karaganda sustain their faith in such difficult circumstances?
When Paulina Foote was invited by the Mennonite Brethren Board of Foreign Missions to serve as a missionary teacher in China, she accepted the assignment as confirmation of her own sense of God’s calling to serve in a foreign land. During the summer of 1922 she gathered her belongings and prepared to say good-bye to Keep Reading…
Pastor Salvador Alcántara, from the rural precinct of El Garzal, Simití, Sur de Bolívar, Colombia, is an exemplary and inspiring man. He is a husband, father, grandfather, pastor of the Foursquare Gospel church in El Garzal, farmer, president of the local comunal action council (junta de acción comunal), and vice-president of ASPROAS—the Alternative Producer Association Keep Reading…