Mennonite Church USA

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.—2 Corinthians 5:18

Park View Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Va., reached a big goal on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 18.

I wish I could have been there to help my home congregation pack 1,562 schools kits for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in a “blitz.”.

On one level, it was the result of tireless organizing by Dorothy Logan, who first promoted the idea of an MCC School Kit blitz five years ago. Each year since, on “blitz day,” Park View’s foyer and library area have been transformed into a production room for adults and children.

People form assembly lines to fill colorful drawstring bags with the classroom basics—notebooks, pencils, a ruler and an eraser. The kit bags are constructed from fabrics donated to and stitched by members of Mennonite Women.

MCC sends them to any of 15 countries where children cannot afford the basics for school.

This year, the blitz took on an intercultural and international flavor when a number of guest workers helped assemble the kits. The guests—both adults and children—came from three different groups: the Islamic Association of the Shenandoah Valley, the Center for Interfaith Engagement at Eastern Mennonite University, and “Hilos en Comon” (Common Threads).

The last group is made up of a Park View member, her neighbor and Hispanic women from the community who meet weekly to work with fabrics and share about their lives.

On blitz day, the women displayed their stories through individual wall hangings mounted in the fellowship room.

The blitz began in midafternoon with a litany led by pastor Barbara Moyer Lehman and two guests. Cindy Byler, who with Daryl, her husband, served for six years as MCC Country Representatives for Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, spoke about the children who will be receiving the kits.

Amir A. Krami, a visiting Muslim scholar from Iran, offered a prayer of dedication for the day’s project before the assembly began.

An Iraqi refugee family sponsored by our church joined the assembly line with particular enthusiasm, knowing that some of the bags will likely be sent to Iraq. It took less than an hour to complete all the kits, and then the workers were served ice cream and peaches.

Because the blitz took such an unusual turn, I looked for ways God may have worked to bring it about. Organizer Dorothy Logan enthusiastically addressed this question. She told me about a man from the Islamic Association who took photos of their members working in the assembly line.

He plans to post the photos on their website and newsletter. He told Dorothy, “We are small at the mosque; to do something like this, we need to ‘tag’ you.”

“It felt like a bundle of trust and bonding dropped straight down from heaven,” she said, “when I had just met him for the first time.”

Dorothy also saw God at work behind the animated conversations, intermingling and sharing of hospitality. Seeing Muslim and Hispanic women gather around quilt frames with women from Park View to knot blankets to be sent to MCC for displaced people and then eating together felt to her like a drama and/or dream with lines taken from parts of the Sermon on the Mount.

It was “definitely a God happening, where God’s people worked together in sharing his love.”

From yet another perspective, what happened at Park View on Aug. 18 was a result of a patient cultivation of relationships by MCC between Mennonites and the people of Iraq and Iran for well over a decade.

At a time when tensions between the United States and Muslim nations are high, this, too, points toward the hand of God, working behind the scenes to reconcile all things to himself through Christ.

Thanks be to God.