Our local General Conference churches have recently undergone an extensive “Life” process – a process developed in promoting the understanding of the past, present and future of the Mennonite Church. As we explored our past and came to terms with the number of times we emigrated in order to keep ourselves “separate from the world,” our Church often wondered if our people would continue to find new “lands” to escape to in the future. Being the leader of one such discussion group, I shared with them the reasons that our forefathers emmigrated from Prussia to Russia, from Russia to Canada, and then from Canada to Mexico and Paraguay. We found many similarities between the decisions that our ancestors had to make when compared with our decisions we make today – decisions the government is making for us in our education system, the threat of war in various parts of the world, the affluence that we enjoy in Canada and the influence of other cultures,
religions and lifestyles on us as a Mennonite people. . . .