Our Daily Bread – Caring in the Name of Christ
About 160 delegates and guests attended the MCC BC Annual Meeting and Conference at Culloden MB Church in Vancouver that explored the theme of “Our Daily Bread – Caring in the Name of Christ.”
Keynote speaker Willie Reimer spoke on “Exclusion and Christ’s Peaceful Embrace” acknowledging that many in attendance would have experienced the suffering and hunger that millions currently experience.
“Today we have many examples of people excluded from the basic necessities of life,” he said. “The current economic crisis has meant that ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ has become much for expensive for many people in the world.”
Giving examples from North Korea, Darfur, Eastern Congo and Lebanon, Reimer showed how MCC is working move people from exclusion to life in Christ.
“As Mennonites we believe in God’s call to be peacemakers,” he said. “We can all work towards inclusion in Christ’s peaceful embrace.”
The day included workshops that dealt with food security issues and MCC programming. New this year were several workshops that took participants offsite to the locations where MCC is at work including the MCC Thrift Shop, the MCC Employment Centre in Richmond, the MCC Refugee office, the New Foundations program which works with newcomers especially single mothers, and Place of Refuge – a recovery home for men.
Participants from all workshops were given an opportunity to feedback to the whole group and share highlights from their experience. Carolyn Krahn, who attended the Material Resources workshop that focused on the need for creativity when it comes to responding to need, spoke enthusiastically about the challenge they were given in their workshop.
“We were given a pair of jeans, scissors and a stapler and told we had to create a shopping bag that would be strong enough to hold a watermelon,” she said, adding that it was a great way to learn about some of the challenges faced by the Material Resources Centre as they deal with donated items and how to best use them.
The day ended with a panel discussion on issues of food security both at home and abroad. The panel included David Auperlee with Jacob’s Well – an intentional community in the Downtown East Side, Karyn Santiago - a board member of the Fraser Valley Gleaners, Dave Murray – the director of the Abbotsford Food Bank, and Bruce Guenther – program coordinator for MCC Food, Disaster and Material Resources. Each representative spoke about the challenges faced by those they serve.
Auperlee farms a two-lot plot of land in the Downtown East Side which provides fresh, organic food to their community kitchen. Some of the challenges he identified included mental illness and addiction; other challenges were much more straightforward.
“Poverty and lifestyle choices sometimes mean that people don’t have teeth,” he said. “That makes it challenging to each healthy food like raw fruit and vegetables.”
Guenther identified some of the challenges faced by the poor internationally including rising food costs which have doubled or tripled making it impossible for some to feed their families. Other challenges included climate change, which has made it difficult to predict planting seasons and hunger seasons.
The day also included a silent auction of special items gleaned from the MCC Thrift Shops, singing and story telling from around MCC’s refugee program, the Abbotsford Relief Sale which celebrated its 40th sale this year, as well as international and local voluntary service workers.
“What a great day this has been,” said George Epp, a delegate from Sardis Community Church in Chilliwack. “You folks do such a great job at showing us what MCC does around the world. I just wish more people could have been here!”
Share
RSS feed