African Mennonite women have been leaders of renewal and revival. They have been prophets and healers. They have witnessed miracles and cast out demons.

But their stories have not been told.

Anicka Fast works to correct this as she edits a biographical series, “Global Anabaptist Forebears,” about Anabaptists in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

To be published in 2026 by Regnum Books, the first volume focuses on Mennonite leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The series is a project of Mennonite World Conference. Fast serves with Mennonite Mission Network and is secretary of MWC’s Faith and Life Commission.

Researching for her doctoral dissertation on the beginnings of the Mennonite Church in the DRC, Fast was frustrated by the lack of Congolese voices in the official histories.

“The story was strongly controlled by the mission board,” Fast said. “They would edit it to fit the narrative that they wanted. I noticed that women were very absent from the official stories — both missionary women and Congolese women. I noticed that Congolese men were also very absent.”

Fast wanted to know who our African Anabaptist ancestors were. How did they live their faith? What were their struggles?

Studying World Christianity at Boston University, she learned that biographies were a good way to hear the voices of people who were marginalized in histories written by European and North American missionaries.

Material in the archives complemented her interviews with Mennonites in the DRC about the early days of the Mennonite church there.

“It was like a treasure hunt of searching in the archives after getting clues from interviews with Congolese Mennonites,” Fast said. “They may not have been able to remember all the way back to the beginning of the church, but they could give hints to perspectives that I could then be alert to in the mission archives and so ­discover sides of the story that the ­official histories had completely glossed over.”

In 2021, after completing her doctorate, Fast began an MMN assignment from her home in Burkina Faso. She taught church history and encouraged her students to write histories about their local congregations and biographies of early church members, both women and men. Mennonites in the DRC also invited Fast to teach and conduct history-writing workshops.

“I had a vision that these stories, written by local historians, could contribute to having a truer story about what it means to be a global Anabaptist church,” Fast said. “We need a new generation of textbooks [that introduce us to] our ancestors, realizing that many of our forebears in faith came from continents other than where we live.”

Fast Quoted from Congolese historian Guy Kapeme’s biography of Esther Kholoma, an early Mennonite leader in the DRC: “Through [Kholoma], God healed the sick, gave children to the barren, delivered captives, overthrew the altars of false gods, brought joy and relief to the downcast and restored the lives of many.”

Kholoma saw a vision while in a monthlong coma, a common way for African traditional healers to receive their vocations. When she awoke, she began preaching and healing women who weren’t able to have children. God continued to give her revelations.

“She would get up in the middle of the night and run through the streets, proclaiming the messages that God gave to her,” Fast said.

Fast said one could almost tell the history of the African church as a series of renewal movements led by women like Kholoma.

The project depends on donations, which can be given online at mwc-cmm.org/en/donate-now (select “Other,” then “Global Mennonite History Project” from the drop-down menu), or by check, noting that it is for the Global Mennonite History Project, to Mennonite World Conference, PO Box 5364, Lancaster, PA 17606-5364.