Preparing to host the Mennonite World Conference assembly in 2028, Ethiopian Anabaptists are telling their stories of mission and peacemaking in a North American journal.

The stories appear in a special issue of Anabaptist Witness, which sells for $20 as a fundraiser for an Ethiopian prison ministry and seminary scholarships.

“I was deeply moved by the powerful stories and wisdom shared in these incredible firsthand stories about the work Meserete Kristos Church is doing,” said Henok T. Mekonin, who guest edited the issue.

Mekonin is global leadership collaborative specialist at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary.

Anabaptist Witness is a publication of AMBS, Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Mission Network.

Ethiopians wrote most of the articles in the special issue, with the theme, “Mission and Peace in Ethiopia.”

Desalegn Abebe, president of the Meserete Kristos Church, the Anabaptist denomination in Ethiopia, said in a letter that the Ethiopians took extra time to write in English to make “materials available for our global Anabaptist families that are a bit distant from us.”

The project fulfills a goal to produce materials in preparation for the MWC assembly.

The issue includes articles on “Toward a Christology of Peace” by Geleta Tasfeye Berisso and “Lessons on the Need for Peacemaking for Mission in Ethiopia from Matthew 5:9 and 2 Corinthians 5:17-21,” by Yimenu Adimass Belay. The issue also has an article by Mekonnen Gemeda, MKC’s peace building division director, called “Culturally Rooted Empowering Peacebuilding.”

Proceeds from sales of the print issue (available for purchase here) will support MKC’s peace and reconciliation and prison ministry programs, as well as scholarships for students at the Meserete Kristos Seminary who are also part of AMBS’s Master of Arts in Theology and Global Anabaptism program.

Jamie Pitts, Anabaptist Witness editor, said “Mission and Peace in Ethiopia” invites North American and European Anabaptists to consider Ethiopian Anabaptists as theological partners. He considers it an “important step forward in becoming a global Anabaptist community that does theology together.”