A Memoir: Linking Five Generations 1880 – 2017
Author: Erwin Boschmann
“This is my story. Born in Paraguay, my story, through that of my ancestors, goes back some 500 years to the Ukraine, to Siberia, to Prussia, to Germany, and to Holland. I am blessed to have known and loved my four grandparents. Living in the U.S. all my adult life, I have the enormous privilege of watching my grandchildren grow and mature.
But the clock is ticking and time is moving on. In due time, my grandchildren will become parents, and eventually grandparents. May the soar like eagles, hitch their wagons to the stars but live with the highest values. That will become their story.”
In Pursuit 0f Faithfulness
Author: Rich Preheim (nephew to Beth Goering)
“With an ear for engaging stories and an eye for historical detail, Preheim offers a thought full narrative of Mennonites seeking to be faithful to the call of the gospel in varied contexts and communities. This book is a gift to all who seek a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Mennonite congregational life, past and present.”
– Steven M Nolt, senior fellow, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College
Breaking New Ground
Author: Susan Ione-Miller
A history of First Mennonite Church, Indianapolis. Read this amazing story of rural Mennonites in Indianapolis – building and outgrowing two new meeting houses; starting two sister churches; empowering young leaders; calling women pastors; welcoming diversity; addressing controversy; and serving with humility. This innovative congregation on the cutting edge of Mennonite theology continues to share Christ’s love, peace, and reconciliation in its seventh decade.
Evening Chore
Author: Shari Wagner
Shari Wagner takes us with her to the far pasture, that borderland where at dusk the known meets the unknown, where details are at once familiar and mysterious. This landscape is both personal and mythological, evoking those invisible connections that Wagner sensed from her extended Mennonite family and acquaintances.
The Farm Wife’s Almanac
Author: Shari Wagner
What do field ditches full of overgrown milkweed, backyard clotheslines, room temperature milk, wild Dutch blitz games, a love of root cellars, unavoidably dusty barn lofts, or a supper table surrounded by cousins and neighbors’ kids as well as one’s own have in common? Perhaps a frequent rural northern Indiana farm setting!
A Hundred Camels:
A Mission Doctor’s Sojourn & Murder Trial in Somalia
Author: Gerald Miller
Here is the account of a Mennonite mission doctor tried for a patient’s murder. As this suspenseful, true-life drama unfolds, readers are given access to an ancient, clan-based culture few Americans have experienced in a country recently declared by the United Nations as a humanitarian crisis “worse than Darfur.”
When Dr. Gerald L. Miller left his Markle, Indiana, family practice to respond to an urgent need for a doctor at the Jamama Hospital, he faced the challenge of understanding an Islamic culture much different from his own and of dealing with medical situations unlike any he had encountered: village children attacked by a mad dog, a psychotic woman chained to a stake, infants dead from malaria, banana workers bitten by venomous snakes. Not only did Miller respond readily and with compassion, he also acted with ingenuity, discovering, for example, that the malaria organism was crossing the placental barrier.
Throughout a year of challenges, Dr. Miller had his Mennonite faith and the abiding support of Somali hospital staff and mission personnel to sustain him. Readers will be moved by the climax of this drama, a surprising outcome involving the actions of a single Somali family.
Paraguay – A Tour Guide
Author: Erwin Boschmann
This colorful book on PARAGUAY is the first comprehensive English language tour guide published about this small, land-locked country. The first three chapters on Basics, Information on Getting There, and Information While Being There provide the nuts and bolts: from the name ‘Paraguay’, to facts and figures, demographics, geography, economy, passports and visas, airlines, clothing, inoculation, health, insurance, customs, going solo vs. group tour, weather, getting around, email, tipping, embassies, to hospitals.
The next three chapters, History, Culture, and Asuncion, describe the Jesuit period, the Triple Alliance War, the Chaco War, politics, music, language and literature, painting, sculpture, carvings, museums, universities, monuments, strolls through Asuncion, proud buildings, memorable restaurants, great lodging, and the Mennonite impact. A Mennonite writer and a painter are also featured. The four chapters on going North, South, East and West of Asuncion explore the countryside, with the chapter on the West detailing the civilizing of the Chaco by the Mennonites.
The final two chapters, Uniquely Paraguay and Oddities explain the name Guarani, nanduti, sopa Paraguaya, yerba mate, algorrobo, mandioca, long life milk, the Southern Cross, and the reversal of periods and commas. The Appendix contains measurement conversion factors, basic Spanish, bibliography, and personal interest stories such as Kornelius Issak, Liese Kaethler, Madame Lynch, and Katharina Warkentin.
Not as the Scribes:
Jesus as a Model for Prophetic Preaching
Author: Ryan Ahlgrim
The Gospels tell us that when Jesus preached, the people were “astounded at his teaching, for he taught hem as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). Unlike the scribes, Jesus spoke like a prophet, announcing what God is doing and saying now, and facilitating an encounter with the reign of God.
Most preaching today resembles the teaching of the scribes: explaining the meaning and application of Scripture. But Ahlgrim boldly suggests that pastors and preachers today should speak as Jesus spoke: as prophets speaking for God instead of as scribes talking about God. Using Jesus’ own astonishing preaching methods and themes as a model, Ahlgrim attempts to recover for our time the transforming power of prophetic preaching.
Red Hills Nostalgia, A Memoir
Author: Priscilla Glee Selzer Boschmann
Priscilla Boschmann’s book narrates her memoirs of growing up happily on a farm in Kansas, how she broke out of the sheltered, conservative life, and how she exploded the horizons of possibilities.