Mission connects people across borders and oceans.

Ted Eash remembers the event well. As a pastor, he often received news about accidents; this one was no different. Several weeks earlier, a member of his congregation, a farmer, was forced to swerve his truck. The truck flipped, injuring him and damaging the truck beyond repair. Even after weeks of recovery time, the man was still unable to complete his regular farm duties or begin preparing for the fall harvest.

The family was struggling.
Across borders: Hannah Eash and a friend celebrate with confetti inside a plastic egg at San Antonio Mennonite Church during an Easter celebration.

But when Ted’s mind wanders back to that autumn, it is not the accident that stands out. One day, while sitting at home, Ted’s oldest son, Brent, approached. The preteen had just one thing to say.

“Well Dad,” said Brent, “I hope they know that the rest of us will come and help him.”

For Ted, this moment illustrates how a culture for mission is created.

“I think some of this stuff gets caught rather than taught. I didn’t talk to Brent about going over there, but it just seemed to be the thing to do for him,” he says.

The Eash family did help out in the wake of the accident, and later, when a farming crisis in the mid-1980s left many local families in a financial hole, the Eash family found new ways to walk alongside them.

“I was part of a support group in which three of us pastors and a person from Oaklawn [a mental health agency in Goshen, Ind.] held meetings Sunday afternoons for these farm families so they could have a forum where they could help each other,” says Ted. “But there was always the kind of individual helping where I and the boys could go and help clean up buildings and get the machinery out and the livestock in shape to sell at the auction so they could disperse and move on with their lives.”

Today, the walls of Ted and Darlene Eash’s home are lined with family portraits. Photos of their children on their wedding days, grandchildren graduating and the family gathered together.

Many members of the family still live close by, within a few square miles of each other in northern Indiana.

Their mission extends far beyond.

Generation to generation, shore to shore: Through voluntary service work, the Eashes have connected with congregations and people throughout the United States. And the connections don’t end at the border. By extending beyond themselves, three generations of Eashes link to faithful followers joining the work of Jesus across the globe.

In the last seven years, Ted and Darlene Eash, members of Forks Mennonite Church in Middlebury, Ind., have served each winter with the SOOP program—a partnership among Mennonite Association of Retired Persons, Mennonite Central Committee Canada and Mennonite Mission Network. They have spent their winter months serving alongside individuals in Phoenix, Ariz., Hazard, Ky., Albuquerque, N.M., Americus, Ga., and Waco, Texas.

The Eashes built relationships with diverse people and broadened their perceptions of the kingdom of God. Ted and Darlene also invited many friends and family members to consider serving through SOOP as well.

“It’s almost like if I don’t do it or if I don’t avail myself of the opportunity to serve I’m not being faithful in following Jesus. It’s the way I feel because of the benefits I receive from it as well as the opportunities to serve,” says Ted.

And the call to a missional lifestyle that Brent Eash picked up on years ago still resonates within his own work today. Brent, a pastor at Shore Mennonite Church in Shipshewana, Ind., works with the congregation to seek a variety of mission opportunities outside worship.

Shore, which sits near a small lake outside Shipshewana, has long supported mission workers Steve and Betsy Dintaman, who serve through Mennonite Mission Network and Eastern Mennonite Missions in Lithuania, on the Baltic Sea. Members of the congregation pray for the Dintamans, send letters of encouragement and provide financial support for their ministry abroad. Steve grew up at Shore, and members take a special interest in his teaching work at LCC International University.

The Dintamans visit Shore when they return to the United States and share stories from their ministry while abroad. This connection enables the Dintamans to serve and the Shore congregation to expand ministry beyond their local community.

“Steve is somebody who connects well with people, and every time they come back and talk about their work people get excited about it and love to hear the stories,” says Brent. “It’s the personal connection that is important for that relationship.”

Brent’s connection with mission also expands to his home. He and Heidi, his wife, are parents to four young adults. Three have served for a year or more through Mission Network service programs.

Northern Indiana to San Antonio: A year ago, the reach of the Eashes and the congregation extended south. After a year in Mennonite Mission Network’s Service Adventure and four years of Spanish and peace, justice and conflict studies at Goshen College, Brent and Heidi’s daughter Hannah chose a second year of service with the Mission Network’s Mennonite Voluntary Service (MVS) unit in San Antonio, Texas.

“My parents and my grandparents and my family are compassionate people, and that impacted me growing up, as far as trying to look beyond what’s immediately around me to the wider community or the country or the world,” says Hannah.

Hannah serves at RAICES (Refugee Immigration Center for Education and Legal Services). She works alongside staff members to help individuals file petitions for relatives and to take on adjustment of status cases for people wanting to become residents or citizens in the United States. Hannah is also being trained in family-based immigration law so that she can begin taking on her own cases.

San Antonio Mennonite Church (SAMC) supports the MVS unit where Eash lives with two other volunteers. The congregation pairs each volunteer with a mentor family. MVS workers are invited for meals at church members’ homes and to activities throughout the city.

The congregation views the unit as an extension of their congregational mission within their local community.

“Hearing the volunteers’ stories of service and having those brought back to the congregation strengthens us to go out and serve. That connection’s pretty vital to who we are as a congregation,” says Rachel Epp Miller, pastor at SAMC.

San Antonio to Benin: Thirty years after their parents collected change for global mission work in tin globe banks, children at SAMC brought their own pennies, nickels and dimes to worship in blue plastic globe banks. The money supported an orphanage in Benin.
Connections across oceans: From left, Theophius Tettah, Bonaventure Akowaonu and Bruce Yoder pray.

Through mission banks, SAMC intentionally expanded its own community to include mission workers abroad and international partners.

In 2006, using mission bank teaching tools, the congregation began a six-week worship series in which they told stories from Benin and gathered money to support La Casa Grande (The Big House), an orphanage started as a mission outreach of Burgos (Spain) Mennonite Church, attended by mission workers Connie and Dennis Byler.

But the Texans wanted a relationship with people in Benin that went beyond monetary support. Together, the congregation created a simple black banner.

“We traced one another’s hands on that banner as a symbol then for the community in Benin that many hands are one also. Trying to create a connection there that our hands are doing things here in San Antonio and recognizing that their hands are doing the work of God also in Benin,” says Epp Miller.

The congregation sent the banner, as well as personal messages on postcards with pictures of the church building, to workers Nancy Frey and Bruce Yoder, who gave them to children at La Casa Grande. In return, adults and children at La Casa Grande sent photos and messages introducing themselves back to SAMC.

Benin to Martinsburg, Pa.: Since second grade, Bruce Yoder has been a member of Martinsburg (Pa.) Mennonite Church. The congregation walked with him through college and through mission work in the Dominican Republic. And now during nine years of ministry in Benin, Martinsburg members continue to support Bruce and to claim his family’s ministry as their own.

Nancy Frey and Bruce Yoder have served through Mission Network since 1999 with their children, Jeremiah and Deborah. Through work at Benin Bible Institute, a school that provides leadership and biblical training for Beninese church leaders, Bruce and Nancy are in contact with people from more than 60 denominations. Bruce serves as a teacher and provides resources for partners in Benin, Ghana and Nigeria. Nancy splits her time between administration and teaching.

In turn, the family is supported by five different North American congregations, including Martinsburg. Martinsburg has provided prayer and financial support, and has played a vital role in offering encouragement.

The last time Bruce visited Martinsburg, he brought along Elder Sunday Eka, the secretary of the Nigerian Mennonite Church.

“We felt more connected because of talking to someone that Bruce was relating to. It gave us a new picture of what Bruce was really doing,” says Bob Yoder, a member of Martinsburg and Bruce’s father. “And as Elder Sunday Eka shared those things, I think he hit a chord with the congregation. Now the congregation is interested in getting some kind of support to the Nigeria Mennonite Church.”

From Pennsylvania and beyond: Mission work in local communities, throughout North America and around the world connects individuals and congregations to kingdom work that extends beyond themselves.

“One of the most important things mission brings to congregational life is a sense of perspective on life beyond our own little group of people that gathers on Sunday to worship,” says Brent Eash. “As important as that is, there’s a lot going on in the world, and mission is one of the ways we connect with that.”

Together, congregations and individuals can help build God’s kingdom one relationship at a time.

Hannah Heinzekehr is congregational resource coordinator and assistant news editor for Mennonite Mission Network.