ADAMA, Ethiopia — It’s time for lunch at Remember the Poorest Community School, about 60 miles south of Addis Ababa. Students are digging into the pasta and buns on their plates. For some of these children, ages 4 to 7, lunch will be their main daily meal.
As a 5-year-old resting in her mother’s arms at the bottom of a boat crowded with refugees, Nhung Tran could not have imagined the life she’s living now. A life as a doctor in Canada. A life where she is responsible for bringing two families to safety as a sponsor.
With the war in Syria entering its sixth year, it’s easy to get lost in the facts and figures: As many as 470,000 dead; 4.6 million refugees who have fled the country; 6.6 million displaced within it; 13.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.
Local Mennonites and mission agencies responded after a powerful earthquake struck the Pacific coast of Ecuador April 16, followed by a second quake four days later. At least 570 people were killed, and more than 7,000 were injured.
The Mennonite Central Committee thrift shop in Harrisonburg, Va., is doing so much business it is investing in a $3.8 million expansion. Deb King is general manager of Gift and Thrift Shop Inc., an organization that includes not only the Gift and Thrift store but also Booksavers of Virginia and Artisans’ Hope, a fair-trade store. King said the thrift shop saw a 9.2 percent increase in revenue in 2015.
While volunteering in Vietnam in the late 1960s as a conscientious objector to the war the U.S. was waging there, Doug Hostetter saw firsthand the effect of Agent Orange, a dioxin-contaminated herbicide the U.S. military used to kill vegetation.
