Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, an area church of Mennonite Church Canada, will welcome diverse congregations from Ontario and Quebec into membership during its annual meeting April 29-30 at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ont.

— Meheret Evangelical Church, which joined MCEC in 2017 as a provisional member, is becoming a full member. Established 25 years ago, Meheret worships in Amharic and English. It is one of the largest congregations of people with Ethiopian origins in the Waterloo region. It is working to expand outreach to Ethiopian and Eritrean people whose first languages are Amharic and Tigrinya.

New provisional members include:

— The Meeting Place, a small urban church plant in Hamilton that began worshiping together 15 years ago, now meeting in a nonprofit coffee shop;

— Goshen Mennonite Church, a congregation made up almost entirely of immigrants and refugees from East Africa that worships in French, English, Swahili, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda in Ottawa;

— Église de Dieu Réparateur des Brèches (Church of God Mender of Breaches), a congregation of Haitian immigrants planted in Montreal more than 25 years ago that worships in French, Creole and English;

— Burning Bush Forest Church, a congregation that began meeting outdoors in the Kitchener-Waterloo area in 2016;

— Centre Béthésda Mennonite de Québec (Bethesda Mennonite Center of Quebec), a congregation of mostly immigrants and refugees from Swahili-speaking countries in East Africa that began meeting online and in small prayer groups in 2019 in Quebec City;

— Église Mennonite Agape (Agape Mennonite Church), a congregation in Drummondville, Quebec, that began when a group started meeting for prayer in 2019 and formed a relationship with another MCEC congregation; and

— Berhan Semay Church (Heavenly Light Church) of Toronto, an Eritrean congregation planted 20 years ago by a visiting Eritrean minister from Sweden that has grown to a congregation of 200 members with a focus on sponsorship and resettlement of refugees. Bahta Kidane, former Mennonite World Conference representative for Eritrea, provides pastoral leadership.