“In an effort to let the justice process come to fruition and to allow a person charged to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, we retained Gary Moore on staff under close supervision until the charges were resolved,” said Ken L. Nafziger, who oversees athletics as EMU’s vice president for student life.

Gary Moore (center)

“By his plea, Gary has admitted that he is guilty of a misdemeanor charge of assault and battery against a male inmate while he was employed by the Virginia Department of Corrections prior to his employment at EMU,” said Nafziger.

“The facts that emerged today at a hearing at the Circuit Court of the City of Chesapeake differed significantly from what we were previously led to believe.”

The judge issued Moore a six-month suspended jail sentence, plus a $250 fine and payment of court costs. He was placed on two years of unsupervised probation.

“This is an extremely sad day for both Gary and our men’s volleyball team, given the positive conversations and experience in volleyball that he and his players reported to me and the director of athletics,” said Nafziger.

The charge apparently stemmed from an incident on June 20, 2012. Moore was charged Oct. 2, 2012, but was not arrested until Feb. 4, 2013, when he was booked and released from Rockingham County Jail.

Moore played one season of volleyball at EMU in 1996 before transferring to George Mason University.

Director of Athletics Dave King said the search for a new head men’s volleyball coach will begin immediately.

After serving in Iraq with the U.S. Army National Guard, Mark Lauro benefited from seeking assistance in healing from residual trauma. (Photo by Jon Styer)

After he got back from the war, Mark Lauro couldn’t pick up his young son without thinking about that night in Iraq. He was an Army National Guard sergeant with a company deployed in 2007 to provide security for military supply convoys. Lauro was in an armored vehicle running reconnaissance a few kilometers ahead of the others, keeping an eye out for trouble and choosing the best route to follow. As he often did, Lauro led the group against traffic on a divided highway to lessen the chance of an IED attack, clearing oncoming civilian vehicles off the road until the convoy had passed.

Among the vehicles he encountered that night was an ambulance, which continued to advance slowly despite Lauro’s commands to stop. Intelligence reports had been warning against possible attacks from emergency vehicles filled with explosives, and Lauro began to run down the rules of engagement checklist: verbal commands, flashing lights, warning shots. The ambulance finally stopped, but a man climbed out and continued to approach on foot, carrying something in his arms. Lauro was preparing to exercise his final, lethal option when he saw that the man was weeping, carrying his badly wounded son, in a desperate search for help. Lauro waved the ambulance on its way and radioed back to the convoy for medical help. The boy died, Lauro later learned.

Months later Lauro returned home to his family in Virginia, but he continued to be troubled by the incident, especially by the way he’d nearly shot another man who was simply trying to save his son.

The Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program and the war that Mark Lauro helped fight in Iraq can both trace their origins to the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. They were very different responses by very different institutions to unprecedented traumas in modern American history. More than a decade after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, public concern is growing about the psychological cost of those conflicts on American soldiers. In early 2013, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported that 22 veterans commit suicide every day. As a result, the STAR program has increasingly looked for ways to work with veterans still struggling on the home front.

One of those closely involved with the issue is Beverly Prestwood-Taylor, executive director of the Brookfield Institute, a Massachusetts-based organization that promotes trauma-healing and peacebuilding. She was familiar with EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding by way of graduate classes she’d taken while pursuing a doctorate at Hartford Seminary. Seeking ways to prepare church congregations and veterans’ families to support soldiers after their return home, Prestwood-Taylor took the week-long STAR training at EMU and began to incorporate its methodology into her work.

The result: a program called the Journey Home From War, a specialized STAR workshop designed for veterans and people in their families, communities or congregations looking for ways to support them. Prestwood-Taylor led the first Journey Home from War workshop in 2009, and has since spun off a variety of similarly designed programs aimed at specific audiences like the clergy and women veterans.

More recently, the Brookfield Institute has also provided trauma-healing and resilience training to a group of United Church of Christ congregations in Massachusetts that were looking for ways to support returning veterans. The participating churches have since launched their own programs, including several support groups and a yoga class for veterans.

Not long after his return to Virginia, Lauro enrolled in the Adult Degree Completion Program at EMU to earn a degree in management and organizational development. Among his final assignments was a paper about his difficulty readjusting to life back home. The style of discipline Sergeant Lauro used for 20-year-old Army privates in Iraq didn’t translate well to a household with two young children. One night, driving to Washington D.C. for a getaway with his wife, a pair of approaching headlights on the interstate triggered a flashback to his reconnaissance patrols in Iraq.

The professor who read Lauro’s paper told him about the STAR program and connected him with STAR director Elaine Zook Barge, who was looking for ways to reach out to veterans. Barge invited Lauro to a STAR training, and in 2011, he went, intending to do nothing more than provide her with feedback from a veteran’s perspective. To his surprise, the experience became intensely personal. He talked about the night he met the ambulance, and in doing so, explored the grief and remorse he’d held ever since.

“I felt free of that burden I’d been carrying.” Lauro says STAR has brought considerable healing to his life, though he still deals occasionally with the effects of his experiences in combat.

In November 2012, Lauro returned to STAR as a speaker at a Journey Home From War workshop led by Prestwood-Taylor on EMU’s campus.

“What STAR offered that we didn’t receive from the military was an explanation of the trauma process. It helped me to understand the technical side of trauma, to understand its actual dynamics, and how these can affect the different parts of the brain,” says Lauro, who works in human resources for the Virginia Department of Transportation. “It wasn’t just theory and concepts. It was science.”

Prestwood-Taylor says STAR is unique in integrating a physiological understanding of trauma with a broader view of its impact on one’s spiritual and social health.

“When most programs look at post-traumatic stress disorder, they deal with body-brain dysfunction and try to help the veteran manage that,” says Prestwood-Taylor. “But there are other aspects of healing that are crucial to finding wholeness.”

She also notes that the majority of veterans who commit suicide today have been home for years (69 percent are over 50 years old, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs), meaning programs like Journey Home from War need to take a long view.

“The need for the community to reach out to veterans and provide support isn’t a short-term need,” Prestwood-Taylor says. “My hope is that there will be something sustainable for 10 years from now, 20 years from now, when it is needed just as much as it is today.”

Article originally published in Peacebuilder magazine, Spring/Summer 2013.

Rockingham County Voter Registrar Doug Geib, a 1986 EMU alumnus, was in Albania in 1996 when that nation held its second presidential election following the downfall of the former communist regime. He’s on his way back, this time as a monitor for the June 23 parliamentary elections. (Photo by Michael Reilly, Daily News Record)

Doug Geib isn’t going into completely unfamiliar territory next week when he travels to Albania to serve as an elections monitor.

Geib, voter registrar for Rockingham County, visited the former communist nation in 1996, when it was holding its second presidential election since the socialist state dissolved in 1991.

Around that time, Geib had been working part time as a government teacher at Turner Ashby High School, and he decided to take a six-month job in Albania teaching children of American missionaries.

“There was a lot of anxiety over the elections,” said Geib, 49, of Rockingham County, who has been the voter registrar for five years. “People that were abused during the communist era did not want to see life return to the way it had been.”

On Tuesday, Geib will leave the United States to return to the southeastern European country to observe national parliamentary elections.

He was selected to be part of an international delegation of 400 election monitors through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

Geib is one of 20 monitors from the U.S. This will be his first time as an international elections monitor.

The delegation will meet in the Albanian capital of Tirana on Thursday for debriefing.

From there, monitors will be assigned to a location where they will observe the June 23 election.

Monitors are tasked with observing and reporting on what they see.

“Our assignment is not to …  interrupt what’s happening on election day,” he said.

Geib said he does not yet know where in Albania he will be stationed or what the voting process will be like, for example if there will be voting machines or all paper ballots.

Poll workers may need to count ballots manually, meaning it could be a long night.

“They have warned us to be prepared for no sleep for 24 hours,” Geib said.

Safety is always a concern when traveling to “unstable nations,” he said, but Geib doesn’t anticipate having any problems.

“[Albania] doesn’t have a history of violence on Election Day,” he said. “It’s something I’m aware of, but I’m not too concerned about it.”

He is looking forward to seeing the changes since he was there 17 years ago, as well as how the Albanians handle elections relative to U.S. electoral practices.

When he returns, Geib plans to relate stories of what he saw to people at home to give them some perspective.

“Even though there might be some grumbling about the way things happen,” he said, “if people knew how things happen in other countries, they appreciate more what they have here.”

Article courtesy Daily News Record, June 15, 2013

EMU President Loren Swartzendruber (far right) with Fiji ambassador to the U.S. Winston Thompson and his wife Queenie on June 2, 2013, when they met with 17 associated with the South Pacific in the Women's Peacebuilding Leadership Program at EMU's Summer Peacebuilding Institute. (Photo by Bonnie Price Lofton)

In Olga Hamadi’s line of work as a human rights lawyer in West Papua, death threats are common.

Violence and human rights violations are plentiful and sorely overlooked, Hamadi said, and police and military personnel who victimize her clients often turn the blame on her. While there are many lawyers in West Papua – one of two Indonesian provinces on the Southwest Pacific island of New Guinea – only about 10 others work to unearth social injustices.

“They know what we do,” Hamadi, 31, said of the military regime in her country. “They always watch us [and] we also become their target.”

A movement exists for the province to claim its independence, which activists claim Indonesia squashed in the 1960s following a coerced vote. In the interim, Hamadi feels compelled to protect citizens with her specialty.

“If I can, I do; I never think to stop doing it, because this is a challenge for me,” she said. “I just feel I have to do something because I see their situations.”

Hamadi is one of 16 women from the South Pacific studying at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) about how to strengthen the peacebuilding skills they employ in their communities, which in addition to West Papua include Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.

Serious problems, ranging from violence against women and children to underdeveloped justice systems, oppressive governments and famine, plague their home nations, said the women, who are part of the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute. The institute is run by EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Specifically, the women are partaking in the second year of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program, in which they spend part of their six weeks at EMU studying with other women. The program wraps Friday.

In addition to the peacebuilders from the South Pacific, five women in this year’s program hail from East Africa. The trips for the South Pacific women were funded through German Protestant groups, notably Church Development Service,* and the East African women’s journeys were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“For me, it’s always [an] exciting and enriching experience to be able to share the work that I do,” said Elizabeth Krishna, 52, of Fiji, who works through the Roman Catholic Church to combat unemployment and crime and close the gap between rich and poor.

During the program, Krishna even had a chance to share her work with Winston Thompson, Fiji’s ambassador to the United States, who visited EMU on June 2.

“I felt great that he was here,” she said. “That feedback from him will go back to our minister of foreign affairs, so that’s a great opportunity.”

As important as the program’s curriculum – which included options to study such topics as reconciliation and forgiveness, trauma awareness and the design of peacebuilding programs – was the chance to learn from each other, the women said.

Hamadi and Amina Abdulkadir, of Somalia, said they recognize that many countries experience the same issues.

“[We] learn from other friends from other countries,” Hamadi said. “Sometimes we have the same situations, we have the same issues and then we learn from their experience dealing with that issue.”

Added Patricia Gure, who works to improve the juvenile justice system in Papua New Guinea: “I’m able to see what’s working for me and things I can take back from here and learn from the experiences here.”

EMU’s Harrisonburg campus also was an ideal setting, participants said.

“I thought it was going to be like [Los Angeles] or New York,” said Veronika “Nika” Maebiru, who works to protect children in the Solomon Islands. “[But] you can’t put an institution for peacebuilding in a big city. The setting [at EMU] was really relevant. … We could reflect and share.”

* EMU editor’s note: The current name of the sponsoring group is Bread for the World, Germany. This article is courtesy of  The Daily News Record (Harrisonburg,Va.), June 12, 2013. For additional information and insights into this topic, read “Dark Beatings, Not Just Sunny Beaches for South Pacific Women.”

Fiji peace leader Koila Costello-Olsson (left) and Queenie Thompson, wife of the Fiji ambassador to the U.S., were moved to tears by some of the testimonials offered by members of the 16-woman South Pacific cohort in the Women's Peacebuilding Leadership Program at the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute. Costello-Olsson directs the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding headquartered in Fiji. The Fijian ambassador, Winston Thompson and Queenie, met with the 16 women and university president Loren Swartzendruber at EMU on June 2, 2013. (Photos by Bonnie Price Lofton)

Sun, unblemished beaches, friendly islanders who like to dance in grass skirts, slow pace of life. A great place to be a tourist. These images dominate the Western media in reference to the South Pacific.

“At once a sanctuary and playground, our magical resort [in Fiji] offers blissful reverie to those who seek intimate peace and quiet, or spirited adventure for thrill seekers,” reads one tourism website for the South Pacific that also touts “sensational” sandy beaches and “lush” tropical foliage.

Life for the permanent residents of most of the islands of the South Pacific, however, is less blissful than the tourist promotions.

Fiji Ambassador Winston Thompson at EMU.

Equality and respect for women – rather than violence inflicted upon them – ranks high as an aspiration of 16 women from five regions in the South Pacific who attended the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), May 6 -June 14. Their other goals include:

• respect for human rights and restorative justice instead of police brutality and imprisonment without due process;
• true democracy instead of military, dictatorial, or colonial rule;
• sustainable development that benefits the islands’ inhabitants, instead of environmentally destructive extraction of natural resources by foreign companies;
• and healing for current and historical trauma.

Peace must be inclusive, reaching to roots

“We desire peace that is inclusive of all groups,” said Koila Costello-Olsson, who directs the Pacific Centre for Peacebuilding headquartered in Fiji. Costello-Olsson spoke as one of the hosts for a June 2 visit to EMU by Winston Thompson, the Fiji ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Queenie. Joining Costello-Olsson in receiving the Thompsons was EMU president Loren Swartzendruber, plus about 30 SPI participants, faculty and staff.

“We need to appreciate and update our traditional ways of solving conflict,” said Costello-Olsson. “For long-term change, we need to look a the deep-rooted sources of conflict in our region.”

Ambassador Thompson and his wife – who encouraged use of her first name, Queenie – heard six women from the group, representing Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Bougainville, West Papua, and the Solomon Islands, speak about the conflicts affecting many of the more than 1,000 islands in the South Pacific.

Government-sanctioned violence

Ana-Latu Dickson (right), of Papua New Guinea, moved listeners as she described her region’s rich traditional culture, which has become dysfunctional under colonialism and its legacy. Rosa Nokise (left) is program director for the Pacific Theological College

“Our cultures have worked in areas of peace for thousands of years,” said Ana-Latu Dickson, who directed the Milne Bay Counseling Service in Papua New Guinea for more than a decade. But a legacy of colonialism and destruction of indigenous cultures has yielded a highly dysfunctional society in Papua New Guinea, including “one of the most brutal police forces in the world,” she added.

Dickson brought tears to the eyes of many in the ambassador’s reception when she referred to the horrific treatment of juveniles for relatively minor offenses and the harms done to women by angry, frustrated men. She credited EMU’s program for teaching her that “peacebuilding is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” and that she and her colleagues have to take steps not to burn out from their difficult work.

At SPI, Dickson said, the women have learned to look at their conflicts through different lens, “learning to analyze our conflicts better, learning to take in the world views of others, learning to sit and listen and to understand the different dynamics in play.”

Gaining insights and tools

After the women’s presentation to him, Thompson rose to commend them for gaining “insights and tools,” plus “generating networks,” that will help them to lead and to find solutions to the problems afflicting Fiji and, by implication, other island nations. “We’ve been suffering and in need for ways to get things back together. I am hopeful that we are moving in the right direction,” he said, referring to current deliberations over a new constitution in that country. “I ask you to hope and pray for Fiji over the next year.”

Queenie, who had become teary as Dickson spoke, added: “I honor all of you. My heart goes out to you. You are doing wonderful work. . . It’s a huge job. You can’t be isolated. Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you.”

The South Pacific women were part of a group of 21 women who formed the newest cohort of EMU’s two-year-old Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program. They were sponsored by Bread for the World, Germany. (The others in the 2013 women’s peacebuilding group were five Somalis from East Africa, sponsored by USAID.)

West Papua has worst conditions

EMU President Loren Swartzendruber and Koila Costello-Olsson look appreciatively at the book given to Dr. Swartzendruber by Ambassador Thompson.

Of the regions they represent, the women spoke of West Papua as having the worst political and social conditions. West Papua is part of an island historically known as Irian Jaya. The eastern part of the island gained independence from Australia in 1975 and is now Papua New Guinea.

West Papua, however, remains under the thumb of Indonesia, with Indonesian and U.S. interests benefiting from an environmentally disastrous gold and copper mine run by Freeport McMoRan, according to Camellia Webb-Gannon, coordinator of the West Papua Project at the University of Sydney.

West Papuans who have protested the environmental destruction and colonial occupation have been killed or simply disappeared in numbers that add up to tens of thousands, amounting to slow-motion genocide, according to academics at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney.

In a 2004 statement, Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu called attention to the plight of West Papua: “For many years the people of South Africa suffered under the yoke of oppression and apartheid.  Many people continue to suffer brutal oppression, where their fundamental dignity as human beings is denied.  One such people is the people of West Papua.

“The people of West Papua have been denied their basic human rights, including their right to self-determination,” said Tutu. “Their cry for justice and freedom has fallen largely on deaf ears. An estimated 100,000 people have died in West Papua since Indonesia took control of the territory in 1963.”

Churches collaborate for positive role

With the backing of 20 churches across the South Pacific, the Pacific Theological College in Fiji is collaborating with Costello-Olsson’s group to help build a network of trained women and men to address widespread social injustices, including violence against women, said Rosalyn “Rosa” Nokise, program director for the college, who is part of the group at SPI.

Nokise said other regional-wide issues are political instability, struggles for self-determination, ethnic tensions (often fostered by political interests), environmental degradation due to extractive industries, and the threats posed by climate change.

For additional information and insights into this topic, read “South Pacific Women Challenge Abuses.”

Group of participants, faculty and staff at EMU’s 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute that met on June 2, 2013, with Fiji’s ambassador to the U. S., Winston Thompson. Front row, (from left): Bill Goldberg, Donna Nari, Carl Stauffer, Carolyn Stauffer, Lynn Roth. Middle Row: Hinda Hassan (in head scarf), Magdalene Toroansi, Ana-Latu Dickson, Rose Wateha’a, Veronika Maebiru, Olga Hamadi, Elizabeth Krishna, Joycelyn Maenukua. Back row: Diane Kellogg, Janice Jenner, Jayne Docherty, Patricia Gure, Vani Catanasiga, Rosalyn Nokise, Koila Costello-Olsson, Alisi Veretawatini, Anareta Apole, Menka Goundan, Tarusila Bradburgh, Justine Maravu, Queenie Thompson, Ambassador Winston Thompson, EMU President Loren Swartzendruber.

Ed Comer, MD, a retired physician, presides over the 21st annual Bach Festival as board president. “A lot of people in our area have no idea what an outstanding festival we put on right here in Harrisonburg,” says Comer. (Photo by Meredith Wilson)

How did a poor farm boy, longtime pediatrician, and master gardener get to be the No. 1 cheerleader for the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival?

“It’s simple,” says Ed Comer, MD.  “My mother made me take piano lessons when I was little, even though we could hardly afford it.” He has been hooked on classical music ever since. When he and his wife Cathy were filling 10 buckets with cut-flowers at their farm on a recent morning, the music of Chopin, his favorite composer, serenaded them. “Chopin was known as the poet of the piano,” he says.

Comer will preside over his first Bach Festival as board president when the event is held for the 21^st time June 9-16 in Harrisonburg, Va. For the first 20 years of the festival, the board president was Nelson Showalter, a local pharmacist.

“A lot of people in our area have no idea what an outstanding festival we put on right here in Harrisonburg,” says Comer. “We attract top musicians from all over the country, and they keep coming back.” He knows first-hand how the Shenandoah Valley festival stands out. Earlier this year Comer attended a similar festival in a bigger city with a bigger budget. “The quality of our music is better,” he says.

The driving force, Comer says, is Kenneth J. Nafziger, founder of the festival and its longtime artistic director and conductor. The annual event is sponsored by Eastern Mennonite University, where Nafziger is a music professor.

Comer also credits Mary Kay Adams, an EMU music professor who is executive director of the festival. “She and the board take care of the business side of the festival so that Ken can concentrate on the music side,” he says.

The 12-member board is a working board, he adds. The other day Comer and two other board members were seen passing out promotional brochures at Harrisonburg’s downtown farmers market. Board members also solicit donations from individuals and businesses. “Music festivals like this can never pay for themselves with ticket sales,” Comer says.

One way the Harrisonburg event saves money and promotes the feeling of family is that board members and others host the out-of-town musicians in their homes. Last year the Comers hosted two members of the festival orchestra − violinist Ralph Allen of New York and trombonist Ron Baedke of Richmond. The Valley’s Bach Festival tries to make its music accessible to a wide variety of people by holding noon concerts in downtown churches, with entry by donation. In recent years the venue has been historic Asbury United Methodist Church.

After the concerts, some of the participants cross the street to the Hardesty-Higgins House, where they can get something to eat or browse the visitors’ center.  Previously they could buy a “Bach’s Lunch” at Mrs. Hardestry’s Tea House. Taking the place of the tea house since last December is New Leaf Pastry Kitchen.

Watching the festival-goers crossing the street from her second-floor office in Hardesty-Higgins, the director of Tourism and Visitor Services, Brenda Black, feels proud that Harrisonburg is able to offer popular music events ranging from this high-brow classical festival to folksy bluegrass events where participants gather at campsites.

This spring Ed and Cathy, who operate a cut-flower business that serves local florists, hosted a garden party for the new Bach Guild, which includes people who give $1,500 or more each year for the festival.

At 75, Comer is retired from his practice as a children’s doctor. For nearly 40 years he worked in a group practice that is now known as Harrisonburg Pediatrics. But he will never retire from music. In fact, five years ago he returned to piano lessons. Now he studies with Sharon Bloomquist, a longtime piano teacher and performer and now a member of the Bach Festival board.

The women's volleyball team will host the EMU Invitational, Aug. 30-31, to open the 2013 season. The Lady Royals will play 27 matches this fall, 10 at home. (Photo by Wayne Gehman)

After a one-year hiatus, the Lady Royals will again bring a grand spectacle to Yoder Arena at the start of a new season, as the EMU Invitational kicks off the 2013 slate, which was released today.

Eastern Mennonite’s volleyball women will play 27 matches this fall, including 10 at home.  Five of the home dates will come at the first whistle, starting with four contests at the EMU Invitational on Aug. 30 and 31, followed by Mary Baldwin on Sept. 5.

The Invitational is a six-team format this year, featuring EMU, Goucher, Howard Payne, Mary Baldwin, Salem and Waynesburg.  The Lady Royals will play each team except for Goucher.  Over the two days, there will be 12 matches spread over two courts in Yoder Arena.

Following the home stretch to start the year, the women head to Washington, D.C., for the CUA Guetle Invitational on Sept. 7 and 8.  The Lady Royals then kick off the ODAC schedule by hosting Randolph College on Sept. 11.  EMU also welcomes Emory & Henry, Shenandoah, and the ODAC’s two national tourney qualifiers from last fall – Randolph-Macon and Washington and Lee.

Among their road dates are a pair of tri-matches – taking on Guilford and Methodist in Greensboro, N.C., on Oct. 5 and then Bridgewater and Catholic on Oct. 26 in Bridgewater.  The regular season ends with a non-conference affair at Goucher on Nov. 2.  The ODAC Tournament is the following week.

The rebuilding Lady Royals started last season with a 2-4 record, before finishing at 4-19.

View the full women’s volleyball schedule…

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Carlos Martinez-Garcia, attending SPI 2013, directs Mennonite theological education in Mexico, a program partly supported by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). He focuses on peacebuilding, justice, and reconciliation in local communities that have been shattered by the presence of drug cartels and violence. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

“In order to survive we have to do a lot of things,” explains Carlos Martinez-Garcia, as he responds to a reporter’s question by listing the various hats he wears: human rights activist, Anabaptist pastor, sociologist, journalist, author of ten books.

Martinez-Garcia directs Mennonite theological education in Mexico, a program partly supported by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). This program puts a strong emphasis not only on the Bible and theological issues, but on peacebuilding, justice, and reconciliation in local communities that have been shattered by the presence of drug cartels and violence.

“MCC sponsored me to SPI” – the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University – “because they believe I will take what I learn back home and use it to benefit Mexico as a whole, especially through my writings on justice and human rights,” explains Martinez-Garcia.

Martinez-Garcia is a regular columnist for a Mexican newspaper and for Protestante Digital, published in Spain. He primarily uses this column to lobby for religious tolerance and peace between Mexicans who incorporate traditional indigenous beliefs into their Catholicism and the orthodox Catholics who worship in much the same way that Catholics in European countries and the United States do.

The proudly indigenous group of Catholics feel that those who abandon traditional-indigenous beliefs and practices are betraying much of what makes Mexicans distinctive – that is, their deeply rooted customs and rich history. Therefore there is religious tension between the two groups of Catholics, and it is not unusual for disagreements to quickly turn violent, says Martinez-Garcia.

When he is not writing for the newspaper and Protestante Digital, Martinez-Garcia serves as the pastor of a small Anabaptist church of about 60-70 people. When he gets back to Mexico he wants share what he has learned at SPI with other pastors and even more widely, through organizing conferences and workshops.

Primarily he is worried about the violence in many of Mexico’s communities and wants to work with churches and other organizations with similar concerns to develop programs for reconciliation. “We have to be mature Christians,” he says. “We have to know the word of God and reality in order to grow in faith and in order to serve the needs of the people.”

Maxim Kumeh received a scholarship to SPI 2013 that covered all of the expenses for two courses, including transportation between his home country of Liberia and the United States. Donated anonymously, it was one of five scholarships awarded in 2013. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

Liberia is country of complexity and turmoil in which 85 percent of the population of 3.7 million people live under the international poverty line. Colonized in 1820 by freed blacks from the United States, Liberia has suffered two back-to-back civil wars that have left the country politically unstable and economically bereft.

It is in this context that Maxim Kumeh has devoted his life’s work to training peacebuilders and restoring civil liberties. Kumeh is the recipient of a scholarship to attend two sessions of the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University.

After working for many years for the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding, Kumeh founded his own organization called Initiative for Positive Change. It focuses on peacebuilding, monitoring Liberia’s official Poverty Reduction Strategy, and training community leaders. In addition to training staff, one of Kumeh’s biggest challenges is to keep the organization going by securing donations and contracts with funders.

Kumeh says Initiative for Positive Change needs long-term contracts – that is, longer than six to 12 months – to be able to focus strategically on the work it needs to do as a Liberia-rooted NGO and not to lose staff to better-paying international NGOs. “We are active civil-society activists,” says Kumeh. “We look at those left out of the government programs” and lobby on their behalf.

For instance, Initiative for Positive Change is part of the Liberian coalition affiliated with Publish What You Pay (PWYP), a global network of civil society organizations calling for an open and accountable extractive sector, so that oil, gas and mining revenues improve the lives of women, men and youth in resource-rich countries. Oftentimes, Kumeh explained, when iron ore, timber, diamonds, gold and tin are being extracted, nearby communities do not receive social benefits from the enterprise.

“When I go back [to Liberia], I think I can make more of a contribution to what we are already doing,” Kumeh says. Through SPI he says that he learned how to make his organization healthier and stronger, making it more sustainable over the long term. He has also learned how to make its work conflict-sensitive and how addressing trauma resulting from years of warfare is a necessary part of rebuilding the country.

We “fought a 14-year war but have never been through any reconciliation process,” he says. Ultimately he hopes that by spreading leadership and peacebuilding skills, Liberian communities will be able to take community development issues into their own hands and mitigate their own conflicts.

The scholarship granted Kumeh was courtesy of an anonymous donor, who specified that preference should be given to a peacebuilder from West Africa. The scholarship covered all of the expenses for two courses, international airfare and domestic transport from airport to SPI, visa-related expenses, lodging in a shared bedroom for two courses, training/materials fees for these courses, and a per diem to pay for food and incidental expenses for the time enrolled at SPI. It was one of five scholarships awarded in 2013, ranging from $500 to all-expenses-paid for three sessions.

“There are so many amazing scholarship applicants each year. It is always a difficult decision for our selection committee to choose which persons will receive our limited number of scholarships,” says William Goldberg, SPI co-director. “I hope that one day we will have the funds to give scholarships to all of our applicants who cannot otherwise get to SPI.”

1982 alumna Phyllis Yoder (second from right) was chosen the state "School Nurse of the Year" by the Michigan Association of School Nurses Conference. Here she is with (from left) daughter Megan Gilbert, husband Dale Yoder, daughter Rachel Yoder, an EMU sophomore. Her other children, sons Tyler and Mitchell, are members of the class of 2014 and class of 2009, respectively. (Photo courtesy Phyllis Yoder)

Phyllis Yoder wasn’t born in Huron County, but she has been a big hit in this area for the past 25-30 years.

Yoder is a registered nurse who works for the Huron Intermediate School District. She was honored with the title of Michigan School Nurse of the Year this past week.

The nurse is originally from Virginia. She moved to the area when she married Dale Yoder. Together they have four children, aging from 19 to 25 years old.

Previously, she worked at Scheurer Hospital for 15 years.

Yoder was presented with her award at the Michigan Association of School Nurses (MASA) Conference in Dearborn. Besides the award presentation, the conference involved two long days of classes and information sharing. She was accompanied by ISD administrators Joseph Murphy, Jill Iskow and Carol Brown.

“It was a very good conference,” Yoder said. The classes covered numerous topics including legal issues.

“Each day of the conference was long and intense, but it was very good,” she said.

Yoder was recommended for the award by the ISD. According to MASN rules, only a school’s administration is eligible to recommend a nurse. The annual award is given to only one school nurse in the state. As far as she knows, Yoder is the only full time, registered school nurse in Huron County.

“I feel very honored,” she said. “There are a lot of nurses that deserve it as much as I. … I feel very blessed to work for the HISD.”

There were about 130 school nurses attending the event. That represents about 60 percent of all school nurses in the state. Michigan is rated lowest in the nation in ratio of nurses to students.

Financial constraints is the main reason for the low percentage. A School Nurse Task Force has been formed to rectify this problem. It was created by the Michigan Department of Community Health and the Michigan Department of Education.

As part of the award presentation, Yoder was asked to discuss her job. She created a power point presentation and showed it on Thursday night.

Part of her power point presentation stated, “Some of the other things I do as the school nurse is to teach CPR and First Aid annually for staff. I provide teachers with needed health information about their students. I communicate with parents and health care providers regarding health concerns. I educate staff members on health conditions, medications, and medical procedures that they encounter with their students.

At the award presentation, the Michigan Association of School Nurses gave a brochure describing Yoder and some of her accomplishments.

“Superintendent Joseph Murphy of Huron ISD describes Phyllis as a leader with initiative, positive attitude and a guiding example of the role a school nurse should play in a school setting. Other school administrators used words like competency, trustworthy, excellent communicator and positive role mode.

“As a recipient of the very prestigious award of School Nurse of the Year, Phyllis has demonstrated through her school nursing skills and abilities that she is very worthy of this honor.”

Article courtesy Huron Daily Tribune, May 9, 2013

The Somali cohort in the 2013-15 Women's Peacebuilding Leadership Program (left to right): Amina Abdulkadir, Nimo Somo, Nimo Farah, Rukiya A. Aligab, Hinda Hassan. (Photos by Bonnie Price Lofton)

It’s a diverse group of five women. Among their many roles and areas of expertise, one can find law, information technology, business administration, political advocacy, rehabilitating youth with the UNDP, and a graduate degree in gender and development. In common are their Somali ethnicity, Muslim faith, and burning desire to prepare themselves and nurture other women for playing major roles as peacemakers.

To accomplish this, they gladly accepted USAID assistance to be part of the 2013-15 Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program. They started with attending several sessions of the 2013 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU). They then will return to their home regions where experienced leaders in the peace field will mentor them, helping them to integrate their academic training with their day-to-day work. At the end, they will earn a graduate certificate in conflict transformation conferred by EMU.

In this first leg of their program, the five ethnically Somali women travelled more than 8,000 miles from their homes in East Africa – Kenya, Somalia and Somaliland – to Harrisonburg, Va., to attend SPI in May and June. Course topics included conflict analysis, peacebuilding practice, restorative justice, and trauma awareness & resilience.

Inspired by Dekha Ibrahim Abdi

“I heard about the program from people who came here before,” said Rukiya A. Aligab, 26, born in

Rukiya A. Aligab

Kenya of Somali parents. One of those people was Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, a childhood friend of her mother’s. Abdi studied and taught peace at EMU a half-dozen times from 1998 until she died in a car accident in 2011. As shown in a 1998 documentary, The Wajir Story, Abdi was an exceptional leader of peacemaking efforts in Wajir, the northeast section of Kenya, bordering on Somalia.

Weeks before her death, Abdi participated in a brainstorming session in the summer of 2011 at EMU that eventually resulted in the launching of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Progam in the summer of 2012.

“I wish Dekha could see the inspiring, energetic women following in her footsteps,” says Jan Jenner, who was a close friend of Abdi’s. Jenner directs this new women’s program lodged under EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. “Her dreams are coming true.”

Aligab notes that the women’s group led by Abdi gave rise to an official “district peace committee” in Wajir, in which women play key decision-making roles. This model has since been replicated throughout Kenya.

Conflicts over land, water, resources

Nimo Somo, 26, was born in Wajir a few years after the Wagalla Massacre, a devastating event recently

Nimo Somo

acknowledged by Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Committee. (Vice-chair of this committee is Tecla Wanjala, who earned her MA through the EMU program in 2003.) The massacre happened on Feb. 10, 1984. Soldiers employed by the Kenyan government rounded up ethnic Somalis from a certain clan, tortured them, and killed about 5,000. Somo’s grandfather escaped being killed, but was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down.

Officially, the Kenyan soldiers had been dispatched to stop inter-clan warfare over land for grazing cattle. Not surprisingly, warfare continued after the massacre, since the roots of the regional conflicts had not been addressed, perpetuating trauma upon trauma.

“There’s a scarcity of resources [in Wajir],” says Somo, a lawyer who finds peace work more energizing than preparing legal briefs in an office. Land is needed by the 80 percent of the population that relies on moving livestock from one grazing area to another. With climate change, droughts and famines have come more frequently. When the scarcity becomes politicized, says Somo, the region explodes with killing.

Amina Abdulkadir

“For 22 years, we are in war,” says Amina Abdulkadir, 27, who is a native of Puntland, a semi-autonomous state in the northeast corner of Somalia. Throughout the region, “the problems are the same: sharing power and resources, mainly land and water.”

Women from all clans rank among the biggest victims in the struggle over power and resources, she adds. “We need a role, but it is denied. My dream is to train women in peacebuilding and reconciliation.”

Abdulkadir credits the recently elected president of Somalia, Hassan Sheik Mohamud, with making an effort not to favor one clan over another and with appointing two women to high government offices. Mohamud attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at EMU in 2001.

Sharing wisdom, lessons at SPI

Nimo Farah

Nimo Farah, 30, comes from Somaliland, a region that functions as an independent state with its own capital, Hargeisa. She began her journey toward being a civil society leader as a high school activist in 2003. At EMU, she prizes the opportunity to have cross-cultural exposure to an array of other peace practitioners from around the world, where they can borrow from each other’s good practices and adapt them to their own contexts. (Read Steven Hakizimana’s story for an example of a fellow SPI participant.)

The experiential style of teaching and learning used at EMU also intrigues her. She says her seven-day class in how to design learner-centered trainings has inspired her to introduce youth-focused dialogue education to Somaliland and to seek a part-time teaching role at the University of Hargeisa where she also will use her newly acquired skills.

Farah and several other women voiced measured appreciation for traditional decision-making circles consisting of elderly and presumably wise men, but added that the days of women being seen and not heard, and of youth being treated as if they had nothing to offer, needed to be relegated to the past.

Grateful for USAID’s support of women

Hinda Hassan

Hinda Hassan, 30, of Somaliland, who works on improving the prospects of youth and women through UNDP training projects, became interested in peace while working as an IT specialist for a project called Observatory of Conflict and Violence Prevention. She credited USAID for making it possible “for Somali women to stand up and demand change. In the Somali culture, it is always men who have the say. Now it is our time.”

Junior Bianca Ygarza helped lead the Royals to one of their best seasons in program history, including a trip to the NCAA Tournament. (Photo by Ryan Kelly)

Junior Bianca Ygarza (Conestoga, Pa./Penn Manor) has been named to the Virginia Sports Information Directors (VaSID) All-State Second Team, giving Ygarza her second All-State honor.  The forward was also named to the Second Team of the All-State Women’s Basketball College Division last year.

Ygarza, who was named All-ODAC First Team earlier this year, helped lead a very balanced Royals team to their best ever ODAC finish at 15-1, and just the second NCAA Tournament berth in program history.  She was second on the team with 9.6 points per game and first with 7.0 rebounds.  Ygarza led Eastern Mennonite in free throws as well, hitting 80-of-121 tosses.

She finished in the top 23 in the ODAC in 12 different categories.  During the year, Ygarza scored a season-high 19 points to go with seven rebounds against nationally-ranked Messiah College.  She also had 15 points, including the game-winning offensive put-back with 1.3 seconds left, in an upset of then nationally-ranked Mary Washington.

The Royals finished the 2012-13 campaign with a record of 21-7 overall after a loss to Marymount (Va.) in the NCAA Tournament.  The women had a program-best 14-game winning streak snapped in the ODAC Championship game and finished with the fourth-most wins in EMU history.

VaSID is comprised of sports information or athletics communications professionals from intercollegiate institutions throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. Membership is open to any individual affiliated with one of the state’s institutions at the NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III, NAIA, community college and independent levels, provided that individual’s area of responsibility lies within the realm of sports information.

Steven Hakizimana, left orphaned by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, is the 2013 recipient of the Winston Fellowship, the most generous scholarship that EMU's Summer Peacebuilding Institute is able to offer. (Photo by Kara Lofton)

Steven Hakizimana was 8 when his parents and siblings were murdered before his eyes during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. For the next nine years Hakizimana struggled both to simply survive and to understand the atrocities wreaked on himself and his country.

Hakizimana came to feel that in order for healing to occur, reconciliation between his Tutsi group and the Hutus – both being responsible for widespread killings at different points – must be pursued. He wanted to deepen his understanding of justice and peace and to improve his skills for transforming conflict.

Hakizimana is the 2013 recipient of the Winston Fellowship – the most generous scholarship that the Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) is able to offer. He found SPI at Eastern Mennonite University through an Internet search of peacebuilding programs, but was encouraged by a friend who knew EMU to apply.

I was interested in SPI “because of where I come from,” he says, referring to his home country, whose 1994 genocide formed the basis of the 2004 blockbuster movie Hotel Rwanda. “The second reason is that I needed to come and exchange with those who have lived the same tragedies.”

Life as a homeless orphan

Hakizimana – who will be entering his last year of law school in the fall – had, with a couple of his friends, been making some effort to help the community heal through a program they called “healing through the arts and drama,” but they soon realized that they were not equipped to deal with the depth of people’s pain and anger. When the friends all left for school, the program ceased.

Hakizimana explained that ultimately the group didn’t have enough skills to know what they were doing. Now, at SPI, he is gaining an understanding of what people went through and how they react, not to mention why he reacted to the conflict the way that he did (through burying his feelings).

After Hakizimana’s family was murdered, he and a friend fled to the swamps where they hid. Soon, however, someone found them and attacked, hitting him on the head. Hakizimana woke up some time later in a hospital bed with his head in bandages.

Eventually, he was adopted by a family who viewed him as little better than a slave and forced him – from the ages of 8 to 10 – to do hard labor for them. When he couldn’t take it any more, Hakizimana left and went to a neighboring family looking for work. There the husband was kind to him and treated him like a son, but the older of the two wives was an “evil sort,” recalls Hakizimana, mistreating him while the husband was away.

Discovering grandmother and sister

He endured conditions with this family for about 18 months until one day the husband came home and told him that there was reason to believe that one of his grandmothers and one sister may be alive.

On Feb. 12, 1998, this kind man took Hakizimana to meet his sister and his grandmother. They barely recognized each other, but felt overjoyed at being reunited. At the time, they were in a very desperate and vulnerable situation and the husband offered to keep Hakizimana until they were able to get on their feet. So Hakizimana found himself back with the good husband and the hurtful wife. A week later, though, Hakizimana left to live with his sister and grandmother, preferring their love despite their poverty.

Beginning school at age 14

At the age of 14 Hakizimana started school for the very first time. “High school was a very lonely time,” he said. “It was very painful to see visiting days with parents bringing things for their children.”

The children without visitors – most of whom had lost family members through the genocide – formed their own “families” in school by separating themselves into groups of ten or so with a nominated “father” and “mother,” usually the oldest male and female in the respective groups. “That is how we tried to cover ourselves as family,” he said. “You’re not living life if there is not someone to praise you.” They became so close that during the holidays most of the children decided to stay at school, partly because they had nowhere to go that felt like home and partly because they had found family with one another.

Facing unresolved fear and anger

Hakizimana explained that after the Rwandan genocide the main question that people asked themselves was, “Will I be able to survive after I have survived this?” It is still a very tense and politically unstable region where victims and perpetrators must learn to coexist amidst pain, fear and anger.

His own turning point came in 2005 when the Rwandan government began a mass release of tens of thousands of prisoners, most of whom had confessed involvement in the 1994 genocide. Among them was a man who confessed to having killed Hakizimana’s uncle.

This man knocked on the door as Hakizimana, his grandmother, and his sister  were eating lunch and asked to come in. Upon hearing his confession, Hakizimana’s grandmother and sister ran from the room because they did not want to hear any more. Hakizimana said that as an African man he had to sit down with him and hear the man’s apology. Although Hakizimana was upset and shaken, he told the man to go and come again in one week.

“There are some truths that are very regrettable,” Hakizimana says today. “There are some truths that are hard to handle.” When the man came back, Hakizimana extended his forgiveness, but he said it was many years before he actually believed his own words. For him, forgiveness was a choice. He decided he would forgive the man and over time, he actually began to be able to do it.

“Why did you do it?”

A year after this encounter, Hakizimana was finally able to sit down with the man and have a beer and to make peace with his crime. It was at this point that he was able to ask him, “Why did you do it?” and listen as the man told him his own story.

Prejudices between the Hutus and the Tutsis are deeply held and from a very young age the man – who was also raised by his grandmother – had been told that his family had been killed by Tutsis, which he later learned was not true. However by the time the 1994 genocide occurred, the man had developed so much hatred for the Tutsis that it was nothing to him to simply join in with the massacre. Now, however, the man must live with both the guilt of what he did and the shame that his wife and family feel for his participation.

At first Hakizimana,’s family called him naive for his efforts to forgive both the man and other perpetrators. In 2007, though, Hakizimana had the opportunity to attend a World Vision training. He decided to take his sister with him to the training and hoped the experience might spark a spirit of forgiveness in her. There they embraced several sayings to help them move past the atrocities committed against them such as, “when you dwell on the past, you lose the future” and “when you’re going to build a new order, you have to destroy the old, because you cannot develop both.”

Hakizimana and his younger sister ended up moving away from the community in which their grandmother still lives in order to get away from some of the lingering pain and bad memories. From that point on, he says his sister began changing for the better. She finished high school in 2010 and is now a university student who works as a bank manager.

Forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling

“Forgiveness is personal,” Hakizimana mused. “It’s not a feeling. You can’t close your eyes and wait until you feel like forgiving. Forgiveness is not logical. It’s not even knowing the truth. You may even be distracted by the truth. It is a decision. You sit there and say, ‘I solemnly swear that I will forgive’ and then you work at it until it comes slowly, slowly.”

After SPI, Hakizimana plans to return to Rwanda to finish his last year of school. (Consider the educational gap he has closed between entering school for the first time at age 14 in order to be a multilingual university student today at age 27.) Hakizimana also will complete a four-week internship with the Strongest Oak Foundation in Rwanda, the organization that sponsored his SPI application. This internship is required by his Winston Fellowship, which covered all expenses associated with traveling to EMU and attending three SPI sessions. He hopes to one day resume his work of healing and reconciliation through drama and arts and believes that the skills learned the past three weeks at SPI will help him to do this with more understanding and effectiveness.

For a related story from the neighboring country of Burundi, read about Jean Claude Nkundwa, who is earning a master’s degree in conflict transformation from EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

Lovers of classical music have learned to reserve a week in mid-June each year to attend the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival, now embarking on its third decade. The festival continues to be guided by its inspirational and visionary founder, EMU music professor Ken J. Nafziger, pictured here conducting at the 2012 festival.

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach never dies, as will be obvious to those experiencing his music at the 21^st Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival. For more than two decades, the festival has celebrated the legacy of the 18^th-century German composer, usually paired with the legacies of a rotating selection of other composers. This year the festival will be held June 9-16 at Eastern Mennonite University and nearby venues in Harrisonburg, Va.

This summer’s festival will include the music of 19^th-century composer Giuseppe Verdi of Italy and 20^th-century composer Benjamin Britten of England. Selections from their operas will heighten the drama of the festival, said Ken J. Nafziger, an EMU music professor who is the festival’s artistic director and conductor.

The festival, founded by Nafziger, will feature a diverse cast of artists this year. They include a cluster of New York musicians, a Cuban violinist, child-prodigy flutist, and many others.

Grant supports acclaimed artists

A $12,000 grant from the Rhodes and Leona Carpenter Foundation of Richmond, Va., is helping bring a number of acclaimed artists to this year’s festival.

The festival opens on Sunday, June 9, at 3 p.m., with a concert at EMU’s Lehman Auditorium that includes Bach’s well-known Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, performed by the festival orchestra. Also on the program is Japanese pianist Naoko Takao, performing Britten’s Young Apollo. Tickets are available at 540-432-4582 or emu.edu/boxoffice.  

During the following week, June 10-15, the festival offers noon chamber music concerts at Asbury United Methodist Church in downtown Harrisonburg. No tickets are required, but donations are requested at the door. The complete schedule for the noon concerts is available at emu.edu/bach/schedule/noon.

The child prodigy flutist, Emma Resmini of Fairfax Station, Va., will perform at the Wednesday-noon concert. Last summer she studied in Switzerland with legendary flutist Sir James Galloway. She is the youngest person ever accepted in the National Symphony Orchestra’s youth fellowship program and has soloed with other major symphonies.

Concerts easily accessible to all

On Monday, June 10, at 5:30 p.m. is the annual faculty recital of the Virginia Baroque Performance Academy, an event sponsored by the Bach Festival. The recital features instruments and performance styles that were typical of Bach’s era. The event, held at Asbury United Methodist Church, requires no ticket, but donations are requested.

The Baroque Academy, held June 9-15, offers solo master classes and ensemble coaching by internationally acclaimed artists Arthur Haas, harpsichord; Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba; and Linda Quan, Baroque violin. More information is available at emu.edu/bach/baroque.

Festival Concert 2 on Friday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m., will feature the festival orchestra performing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 and Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from the opera Peter Grimes. The orchestra will be joined by the festival’s internationally known soloists who will sing eight popular arias from Verdi’s operas.

The following night, Saturday, June 15, at 7:30 p.m., the orchestra will be joined by the featured vocal soloists and the festival chorus of 88 singers from near and far. They will perform Verdi’s Requiem.

On Sunday, June 16, at 10 a.m., Nafziger will lead the annual Leipzig service that is inspired by the Lutheran services for which Bach composed and directed music when he was a church organist. Nafziger will be joined by the festival orchestra, organist Marvin Mills, the featured vocal soloists, and North Carolina pastor Isaac Villegas, who will deliver the homily. The service will include Bach’s Cantata 88. No tickets are required for the service, but donations are requested.

New: Father’s Day brunch

New this year, after the Leipzig service, is a Father’s Day buffet brunch in EMU’s Northlawn dining hall. Reservations must be made by June 1 at emu.edu/bach/brunch.

An event connected to the Bach Festival is the Road Scholar Program (formerly Elderhostel) that offers classes throughout the United States. From June 12 to 16 the participants will enjoy the history and culture of the Shenandoah Valley while attending the Bach Festival’s rehearsals, concerts, and classes with the musicians, conductor, and musical scholars. More information is available from roadscholar.org.

Mary Kay Adams, an EMU music professor who is also executive director of the Bach Festival, said the annual event brings a sense of imagination to the Valley. “It is an opportunity to feed the souls of residents,” she said.

Advance tickets for the festival are available at the EMU box office – 540-432-4582 or emu.edu/boxoffice. They will also be available at the door at slightly higher prices.

The complete program for the week is available at emu.edu/bach.

From left: Nathaniel McKnight, Andrea De Avlia and Jordan Luther are participating in the 11-week ministry inquiry program (MIP). "A significant part of the learning comes from the gift of time that the supervising pastors give to serve as mentors and guides for the learning process," said Carmen Schrock-Hurst, instructor in the Bible and religion department and EMU and director of MIP.(Photo by Lindsey Kolb)

Five Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) students are learning through direct experience this summer with congregations and organizations throughout the United States as part of Mennonite Church USA’s Ministry Inquiry Program.

Students are encouraged to teach, preach, provide pastoral visitation, participate in administrative meetings and learn about the day-to-day challenges and joys of serving as a pastor,” said Carmen Schrock-Hurst, instructor in the Bible and religion department and EMU director of the Ministry Inquiry Program (MIP).

Participating students

Jordan Luther, a junior Biblical studies major from Martinsville, Va., is interning at Wellman Mennonite Church in Wellman, Iowa.

Andrea De Avila, a senior psychology and Biblical studies double-major from Victoria, Tamaulipas Mexico, is interning with West Union Mennonite Church in Parnell, Iowa. In addition to her MIP internship, De Avila will serve as youth worship leader at the Mennonite Church USA convention in Phoenix, Ariz.

Nathaniel McKnight, a sophomore social work major from Gaithersburg, Md., is serving as pastoral intern at James Street Mennonite in Lancaster, Pa.

Jacob Landis, a 2013 graduate of Hesston College, is participating in an MIP internship program in Scottdale, Pa. Landis will be a transfer student at EMU in the fall.

In addition, Matthew Naugle, a junior congregation & youth ministries and peacebuilding & development double-major from Forest, Va., is participating in a ministry internship with RISE (a United Methodist church plant) in Harrisonburg. Naugle’s placement is not officially within the scope of  the MIP program, but it’s supported in part by a grant from Haverim, EMU’s Bible and religion alumni organization, “in recognition that many students create and serve in significant ministry internships that are beyond the scope of Mennonite Church USA’s MIP program.”

Hands-on experience

At the completion of their 11-week placement, students in the MIP program receive funds to apply toward their education at a Mennonite college. In addition to Mennonite Church USA, funding comes from EMU, the host congregation and conference, and the student’s sending congregation and conference.

“A significant part of the learning comes from the gift of time that the supervising pastors give to serve as mentors and guides for the learning process,” said Schrock-Hurst. “Many MIP students will serve the broader church in ongoing leadership roles.”

For more information on the Ministry Inquiry Program, visit emu.edu/bible/ministry-inquiry/.