Village News

Hear our prayer, O LORD!
Listen to our cries for help!
Don’t ignore our tears.
For we are Your guests –
travelers passing through,
as our ancestors were before us.

~ Psalm 39:13

Last Sunday 50 people gathered to pray for Ukraine near a Mennonite Heritage Village (MHV) monument built to remember the suffering and deaths our ancestors endured in that same land a hundred years ago. We took the verse above and made it a communal prayer. Look at it again. Could this be the life verse of the Mennonites?

In our brief 500 years of existence, we have faced a lot of tragedy and moved several times. It is hard to imagine that there once were numerous Mennonite villages in Poland and around 300 villages in Russian domains that no longer exist because of intentional persecution and coercive displacement. We have prayed and cried many times and we know what it is to be a pilgrim in this world with no lasting home.

It is wonderful how we have rebuilt our lives again in Canada. However, memorials like the Mennonite Victims of Violence monument remind us to hold our possessions lightly. To not build up personal kingdoms for our own gain, but to keep building up society, investing in others and our faith. Life is fleeting and yet so precious. May we keep looking out for one another as we pass through this world as our ancestors did before us.

In the meantime, MHV is getting ready for the major snow melt we will be having this spring. I will be clearing some snow off our flat roof. We have over 16,000 artefacts in our collections department and need to keep taking care of our new roof. Also, the snow melt on our grounds will also be monitored for build-up or blockages. We certainly don’t want flooding around our heritage buildings. Thankfully, we have a couple of volunteers who are adept at making the needed adjustments with our new Kubota tractor.