Prayers of gratitude and intercession

As an Indian living in Canada on MCC’s International Volunteer Exchange Program, I have made dal (lentil soup) a number of times. When I made it for the first time, I was little nervous, but it was requested again for different groups of people and every time quantity increased.

First, I cooked dal for my host family. Then, my host mom suggested I make it for Thrift on Kent staff (eight people) for our once-a-week soup day. Later, she asked me to make it for Avocat, a MB Mission event she was organising (50–60 people).

Every time the responses were happy faces with happy tummies – which made me happy to share a little bit of India in a bowl (sometimes two)!

Dal is a basic everyday food in India, frequently eaten with flatbread such as roti or chapati or with rice (a combination referred to as dal bhat).

This is the recipe I made for soup day. It’s my personal favourite.

—A Mennonite World Conference release. Ashisha Lal serves as a management support worker at Thrift on Kent in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. She is from Korba, Chhattisgarh, India. Her home church is Katghora Mennonite Church, part of Bharatiya General Conference Mennonite Calisiya (BGCMC).

Recipe:

Palak dal 

Servings: 4

Ingredients:

¼ cup tuvar dal (pigeon pea lentils)
¼ cup masoor dal (pink lentils)
2 cups palak (spinach), chopped
1 cup chopped tomato
1 tbsp chopped garlic
1-2 hari mirch (green chilies), chopped
1 inch adrak (ginger), chopped
1 teaspoon sabut jeera (cumin seeds)
¼ teaspoon asafoetida (hing)
½ teaspoon haldi (turmeric powder)
½ teaspoon lal mirch (red chili powder)
2–2.5 cups water, for cooking lentils
½–1 cup water, to add at the last step
2–3 tablespoons ghee or oil
salt as required
coriander/cilantro for topping

Directions:

Wash lentils. Prepare in a pressure cooker with turmeric powder, tomato and chopped garlic. Add 2–2.5 cups of water. Pressure cook for 5–6 whistles or until dal becomes soft and mushy.

Mash and set aside.

In a pan, heat ghee. Fry cumin, then add chopped ginger. Fry until the raw ginger aroma abates.

Add chopped chili. Fry for half a minute. .
Add chopped spinach. Add red chili powder and asafoetida
Sauté until spinach becomes soft and stops releasing water.
Add mashed lentils.
Add water (½–1 cup, to desired thickness).
Add salt and coriander/cilantro. Simmer 5–6 minutes.

Serve hot with rice and a side vegetable dish or salad or raita (Indian yoghurt).

*Finding unfamiliar words in this recipe? Use your favourite search engine to learn about these new (to you) ingredients.

A greeting from the Vietnam Mennonite Church to the world.

Throughout its history, the people of the Vietnam Mennonite Church (VMC) have never failed to demonstrate their resilience and their commitment to live out the peaceful way of Christ.

First established in 1964 in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), VMC went through many periods of hope, suffering, and then restoration. And we have a secret for this resilience. VMC always emphasizes the role of young people in the development of the church. Young people are steadfast in their belief. They have the energy, skills, and, with the right visions and guidance, they can contribute so much more.

Understand that, we encourage young people to step up and take responsibility and lead the way. We take this Bible verse to heart:

Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4:12).

We started doing that when the church was first established 50 years ago, and we continue today.

When the US–Vietnam war came to an end in 1975, communication between the Vietnamese church and the Mennonite world community was mostly cut off. For four decades, we were considered an underground church.

But in 2009, VMC received the legal status from the Vietnamese government to operate. Later that year, we became a member of the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) at the Assembly in Paraguay. We knew it was time for the church to reconnect with the Mennonite world community.

One of the ways to do that is through volunteer exchange programs for young people, such as Mennonite Central Committee’s programs: IVEP and YAMEN (a joint program with MWC). We select the best candidates among young people in the church to participate in one year of voluntary service overseas.

During their year of service, these young people are ambassadors for the church, and upon their return, they play a central role in generating friendship and collaboration between VMC and other member congregations of MWC.

These young leaders will also make good use of the experience they learnt from MCC to help strengthen the church when they come back. I came to truly appreciate the MCC motto: relief, development and peace in the name of Christ.

With that expectation and dedication, I was the third young person from Vietnam to serve with MCC. We all finished our terms ready to share great stories of friendship and hospitality received, and about how the experience broadens perspectives about the global Anabaptist community.

During the war in Indochina, MCC came to Vietnam to do relief work and advocate for peace between the USA and the Vietnamese. After the war, other NGOs left with American troops, yet MCC remained to continue development work, helping the people of Vietnam. That model continues to be applied in North Korea, Iraq, Syria, DR Congo and other conflict zones. Regardless of people’s political or religious systems, MCC works with those who are willing to partner.

The future is full of hope and anticipation, as young volunteers help the church stay connected with the Mennonite world community, and bring up new opportunities to do God’s work, in Vietnam and elsewhere.  

A joint release of Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Central Committee by Thien Phuoc Quang Tran, the son of a pastor in the Vietnam Mennonite Church (VMC) in Ho Chi Minh City, in the south of Vietnam. He served as the MWC IVEP intern at the United Nations in New York City, USA, 2017–2018.

Young adult candidates from a Mennonite World Conference (MWC) member church in the Global South with a knowledge of international relations and a strong commitment to conflict resolution and peacebuilding are invited to apply for a one-year internship in the Mennonite Central Committee United Nations office in New York City, USA. Applications from Latin America / Caribbean are especially encouraged. 

Click here for more information.

Christian parents have long encouraged their sons and daughters to find a life partner at church activities. They have also encouraged their young adults to meet the global church through international experiences. Sometimes those situations overlap.

Theology students Benni and Rianna Isaak-Krauss will celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary this summer, three years after the Mennonite World Conference Global Youth Summit (GYS) and Assembly where they first met.

Radical movement of God

“I had a gut feeling it would be a really cool experience,” says dual-citizen Canadian/American Rianna Isaak, but as director of a summer camping ministry, attending a conference in the middle of July seemed impossible.

Providentially, she received permission to leave with barely a month to spare. She was able to fill the vacant role of Mennonite Brethren delegate for Canada, and quickly compiled a survey of her national church’s young people.

“Getting two weeks off work was a pretty radical part of God moving things,” Rianna says.

Transformative experience of church

German Benni Krauss, selected two years in advance to represent his national church, co-organized group of 12 more participants from Germany and Switzerland to attend GYS.

It was his second time at GYS. He spent half a year in Paraguay, studying, learning Spanish, gaining context to understand the global and local aspects of the worldwide assembly in Asuncion in 2009.

“Paraguay was pretty transformative,” he says.

With his co-leader for 2015, he planned an extended program for their group that would aim to “contextualize the experience” for the German-speaking young people. They took extra time in the USA before the MWC event to learn about the challenges threatening to split MC USA fracturing with youth. They visited affirming and non-affirming churches.

Benni recommends that participants start planning long before the event. “Make space to build friendships.”

Delegates take ownership

The role of delegate to GYS is not tightly defined, says Benni, but most took ownership of the responsibility in their own ways. “It moved people further into leadership and awareness of the scope of the church,” he says.

As a young person, Rianna says being selected as a delegate sends a message from the church: “We need you; you are important.”

“I felt validated as a leader and contributor, not just a recipient,” says Benni.

At the halfway point between Assemblies, that assessment bears true: 2015 North American GYS delegates are pursing graduate and post-graduate studies in theology (including Rianna at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana, USA), or serving the church as pastors and YABs committee chair.

There’s a feeling of a youth camp at GYS, says Benni. “It’s fun, it’s participatory,… [but] the delegates were also aware of problems and cared about them.” 

For example, one delegate from Latin America approached Rianna to discuss perspectives on sexuality. The respectful conversation they exchanged formed “a sacred space of curiosity and care,” says Rianna. “And we were able to bring the conversation back to our continent groups. It was a very humbling and shaping experience for me.”

GYS and Assembly are of course a gathering of the global church. “There is a profound love for the church, not just my own project even if that works really well,” says Benni. Participants realize “the global church isn’t just a dream.”

He left with some experiences and more questions. “How do we realize our diversity and start building relationships?”

Personal impact

On a personal level, Benni and Rianna built their own relationship despite diverse backgrounds. The spark of interest lit between the two Anabaptist nonconformists at Assembly fanned into flames of love over the next year. Benni visited Rianna’s home and community in Canada after Assembly; Rianna relocated to Benni’s parents’ community in Germany for several months.

This allowed her to act out another assembly lesson: learn a new language.

“Knowing only one language can be marginalizing,” she says, recognizing how not understanding any language but English locked her out of conversations. But it also had the opposite danger: “It wields power in an unhealthy way.”

Yet, everyone at GYS has two things in common, says Benni: unique, contextualized personal identities and a shared Anabaptist identity. Out of that, friendship, partnership, mentorship (perhaps even a bit of romance) can grow.

“There’s what you can do and then you have to lean on the Holy Spirit,” says Benni.

—a Mennonite World Conference release by Karla Braun

This year, we will celebrate our third annual YABs Fellowship Week June 17–24, 2018. The theme is “Called to be Free,” centred on Galatians 5:13–15. We encourage each everyone to choose and adapt these materials in a way that will be useful to your context, translate them where necessary, share and distribute them to all your local congregations.

We’re looking forward to a time of virtual global fellowship and local physical fellowship as we gather to remember and celebrate our international family!

Resources for celebrating YABs Fellowship Week are available at www.mwc-cmm.org/yabsfellowshipweek.

—Mennonite World Conference release by the YABs Committee

Recipe: Ugali

“Ugali is a maize-meal bread-like food mostly eaten alongside chicken or beef stew, Kenyan kale and cabbage or sometimes eggs fried with onions and tomatoes. All you need to make it is water and flour, though some people use salt to make it tasty. It’s consumed by almost everybody in Kenya: we call it energy-giving food.”

Wyclif Ochieng of Kenya participated in Mennonite Central Committee’s International Visitor Exchange Program (IVEP) in Telford, Pennsylvania, USA, 2016–2017. When he made this comfort food for his host family, he discovered it is similar to “grits” his host mom grew up with in the southern state of Georgia.

“Ugali is soft, but – unlike grits – you can grab it with you fingers, mould it in your hand and make something like a scoop from it for the stew or sauce you are eating. My host family liked it so much. After eating ugali for dinner, you feel very full and head to bed straight away; that would be the best night.”

To make:

Pour the same number of cups of water in a saucepan as the number of people to be served.

Heat until the water reaches the boiling point.

Add flour bit by bit in the boiling water and stir it make a porridge-like solution.

Make sure the heat is moderated for a good result.

Depending on how soft or hard you want it to be, that will determine the amount of flour you add.

Let it cook for about 10 minutes.

Now your ugali is ready to eat. Use your thumb to make a hole (we call it othonje) for scooping.

—A Mennonite World Conference release. Wyclif Ochieng is a member of Kisumu East Diocese Songhor of the Kenya Mennonite Church. He was the Kenya Mennonite Church delegate at the Global Youth Summit 2015 and continues to support the work of the MWC YABs committee.