First Mennonite Church of C-U--Nov 2021

November 14, 2021

Today I was happy to visit the Mennonites in this medium size sanctuary, simply and lovingly decorated,  with an intimate feel. Everyone wore a mask, and although it was only 40*, windows were open for ventilation. The congregation had met outside until a couple of weeks ago.

In the guest bag I found a full-size, fair-trade dark chocolate bar—Wow!  There was also church and denomination information, 10,000 Villages info and a friendly welcome card handmade by the kids. The handful of children present were called up for their own special story time near the beginning of the service.

Centering chimes and then piano drew us into worship. The congregation sang from a contemporary hymnbook, led by a single guitar player, Raphael, with a strong beautiful voice.  

Today’s message was an interesting video-link interview with Anne G K, former member here and 40-year Bible translator in Burkina Faso. She met us from her office in Africa and shared some of the difficulty of her work. Consider, for example, translating the word holy. Hebrew has something like three words for it, English four, and the native target language over twenty! Anne also shared a story of her fear in 2005 when armed men were firing shots in her street. She missed her flight to Canada. But the plane she’d been scheduled to fly on crashed in Cameroon. Consider the paradox, she encouraged us, of her great fear of the rebels, but her lack of fear of the flight. Anne reported that today, fall 2021, about one third of Burkina Faso is in antigovernment hands.

After a few minutes of meditation, it was time for congregational sharing of prayer needs and thanksgiving. About sixty people were there with another thirty tuned in by internet. As a visitor, I didn’t find the life details of unknown persons that relevant, but of course this sharing had great value for participants. It took maybe ten minutes:  people sick and those recovering, new jobs, woman leaving abusive husband, an anniversary, etc. Apparently, text messages were also coming in to a chat board for those who didn’t want to stand and speak up or those connecting by internet.

Several people struck up conversations with me after the service. The pastor caught me to chat as well and invited me to call anytime. 

I like it that this church is a big supporter of Champaign's 10,000 Villages, and they support Sola Gratia Farm too. For Thanksgiving they’re having a Gratitude Walk at Meadowbrook Park, and there's a gathering to sing around Pastor Deb’s firepit.

Irrelevant note:  FMC is the place where, many years ago, we were invited to a wedding in which we saw the adoring father of the bride crawl onto the stage to discretely (not!) take photos of his daughter's big moment. :-P