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Delegates from Mennonite Church USA to Bond with Global Family at Africa 2003

NEWTON, Kan. (MC USA) — Kenyetta Aduma remembers how her father dreamed of going to Africa. He never did, but Aduma will when she attends the Aug. 11-17 Mennonite World Conference Assembly Gathered in Bulwayo, Zimbabwe as a Mennonite Church USA Executive Board delegate.

When she returns, she'll bring her father pictures, memories and a deeper sense of their roots as African-American people, she said.

Aduma, director of the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board Office of Cross-Cultural Relations, said, "It will be a gift to experience fellowship on a world-wide level...[to] seek God together and encourage each other to do God's work."

Three other people of color from the USA, recipients of a Schowalter Foundation Grant, will join Aduma at Africa 2003: Erica Littlewolf of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in South Dakota; Zenobia Sowell-Bianchi of Chicago; and Juan Montes of California.

Other adult delegates are Jim Schrag, executive director of Mennonite Church USA; D. Duane Oswald, incoming Mennonite Church USA moderator; Miriam Book of Harlesyville, Pa.; and Jeanne Zook of Portland, Oregon. Erin Huebert of Wichita, Kansas is a Youth Summit delegate. Their insights will help Mennonite Church USA congregations, conferences and agencies to learn from many cultures and to share gifts in mutually beneficial ways.

The US delegate assembly set partnering with the global church as one of three priorities for this biennium, Schrag said. The Executive Board sends its "Firstfruits" donation each year to MWC. It has sent a total of $130,000 — or about 5 percent of its total budget — since Mennonite Church USA began in February 2000.

"We're looking for relationships with others around the world," Schrag said. "By partnering with Mennonite World Conference, we will grow in our self-understanding and our mutuality with others."

These relationships, added Schrag, can help Americans face up to their own spiritual poverty and economic privilege.

"We can get so caught up in our many problems on the reservation," said Littlewolf, a 22-year-old college student. "MWC can broaden my horizons. This [trip] will help me to see people who have different — or even the same — problems and to look out of my own box to learn from them."

As an African-American, Zenobia Sowell-Bianchi's self-understanding, like Aduma's, is deeply linked with Africa. She is a member of the executive board of the African-American Mennonite Association, a constituency group that relates to the Mennonite Church USA Executive Board.

A dentist, she has been on on medical missions to West Africa but never to Zimbabwe. She hopes this trip can add new solidarity with the wider African family. She has told her African brothers and sisters that because of their common heritage they share the evils of slavery, which sent many of them to all parts of the world.

"For that reason, Mennonite World Conference will be an emotional, as well as a spiritual experience for me.... I will be blessed and hope to be a blessing."

Montes is executive director of the Hispanic Mennonite Church, another constituent group of Mennonite Church USA.

"I want to gain a better understanding of the global Mennonite family and to encourage other people of color, particularly Hispanics, to develop global relationships," he said. "As a U.S. church body, we need to learn how to be equal partners in the Mennonite World Conference fellowship rather than being in the power position." That's a challenge, said Duane Oswald, because the U.S. church is part of the only remaining superpower in the world, whose foreign policies tend to dominate.

"It's my hope that we can begin to understand that all people...are part of one body with many gifts. Mutuality happens when we share our struggles and weaknesses, as well as our gifts and strengths," he said.

Common to the worldwide body of Mennonites and Brethren in Christ is the need to focus more intentionally on youth and young adults. At the Youth Summit, Huebert will share findings from the 34 completed surveys returned by young adults in Mennonite Church USA. She sent out 107 of the forms created by MWC so that youth delegates from participating national churches could bring their findings to the summit.

It wasn't a big surprise to Huebert, volunteer coordinator for Inter-Faith Ministries for AmeriCorps and Vista and a graduate of Bethel College in Kansas, that young adults for the most part don't feel connected to the church. Many respondents said they struggle with how to relate their Mennonite background with political issues such as terrorism and religious pluralism, she said.