We have a number of connections with the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville, Pennsylvania. The Heritage Center is a museum and library dedicated to preserving and sharing the stories of Mennonite faith and life in eastern Pennsylvania.
- Many members of Plains Mennonite Church volunteer at the Heritage Center.
- We regularly joined the Heritage Center’s wonderful annual Apple Butter Frolic and Book Sales.
- For many years the office of the non-profit where I worked was based at the Heritage Center and for a few of those years I was the liaison with our scholarly landlords.
- I was once featured in an exhibit on Mennonites serving overseas at the Heritage Center.
The connection continued even after we came to Cambodia in 2019. The fraktur prints that we present to our YAMEN participants at the end of their term and that we gift to friends of MCC in Cambodia are from the Heritage Center.
Shortly before Caleb was born, we received word from MCC International that one of our Cambodian IVEP participants had been placed at the Mennonite Heritage Center.
Sreynith, who goes by Esther in English, is an inspiring young woman who grew up in an orphanage. We met her through the Water of Life Dormitory in Phnom Penh and were very excited when she expressed in interest in MCC’s IVEP/YAMEN programs. Her dream is to start up her own non-profit focused on helping orphans to find belonging and community because, as one, she understands how lonely and isolating it feels, even when basic needs are being met.
Esther will be traveling to the US in August 2023 for an 11-month term of service and will be living with a host family in the Souderton area.
We don’t know who her host family will be but, for our friends in the Souderton area, please drop by the Heritage Center and welcome her. Esther is coming from an outgoing ‘warm’ culture and she might feel a little isolated, so please take the initiative to invite her and ask her about Cambodia. She does not know a great deal about MCC Cambodia but she does know our SALT and YAMEN participants well as they stayed at Water of Life during orientation and she can certainly speak to the Cambodian Christian experience.
I’ll make another post after she arrives so that you know she’s made it.
What a unique gift idea! I’m quite certain at least one of those prints was done by my aunt Drollene Gehman. I have the same print hanging in my house, it’s the Regenerated print.
It’s a small world. Yes, that one is signed by Drollene Gehman. When Isaac saw the frakturs we have up in our office he did mention that you had some up at home but we didn’t realize that one of them was the same and that one of his relatives was the artist. That’s a neat connection.
The Historians at the Heritage Center recommended the fraktur prints. They have been ideal; easy to pack, tied to the Anabaptist faith, and a local traditional art form.