102 With So Much To Do - over a century of women’s work

 

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by Marion Roes

For the past 102 years the women of Erb Street Mennonite Church have met regularly to sew, cook, can, bake, make funeral sandwiches (the best in Waterloo Region!) bake pies; quilt for the Relief Sale, knot, patch, raise funds... and they are still meeting monthly and still completing many of those tasks.

You might ask: Why wasn’t the 100th year recognized? When you finish reading this, you’ll see why. The women were too busy quilting and knotting their way through those years! This year they managed to pause, and on Tuesday, April 20, Erb Street Mennonite Church women celebrated the beginning of the group whose name was the Waterloo Charity Circle. In Erb Street’s history book, titled Path of a People: Erb Street Mennonite Church 1851 - 2001, Karl Kessler devoted 11 pages to the then 93-year-old women’s organization, starting on page 67: “And Still Do More”: Women of Action. He wrote that “The church work of Ontario Mennonite women has a history of reaching back further than 1908, but that year does mark the beginning of organized women’s work in the officially recognized program of the church.”

For a few hours on that celebratory Tuesday afternoon, comforters were knotted, a quilt was stitched, and stories were told. “Great God the Giver of all good” was sung and – amid much chatter and laughter – a delicious comfort-food supper was enjoyed: scalloped potatoes with sausage, jellied salad, mixed vegetables, and angel food cake with lemon sauce for dessert.

Grace Schweitzer, president of the Erb Street WMCEC, hosted the evening’s program of readings and hymn singing, led by song-leader Ruth Jantzi, with some historical trivia added. Readers Jean Fretz, Elsie Shantz, Carolyn Morris and Lucille Weber gave glimpses of the women’s mission work, meetings; items sewn, embroidered, knotted and quilted; social committee meals cooked, relief sale pies baked. Mary Snider Martin, Lynn Jewitt Keller, Merlyn Snider Martin and Grace Martin Schweitzer sang “Somebody” from Junior Hymns, and “When we walk with the Lord” (“Trust and obey”).

“Sister” organizations

In 1916 the Junior Charity Circle was formed for younger women and met for 50 years. CHARITY was an acronym for cheerful, helpful, active, reasonable, interested, tactful, yoke-bearers. A girls club called the Cheerful Sunshine Band was formed in 1940. Sometime before 1976, Margaret Brubacher Good helped form the Beacon Mission Circle. Young women who couldn’t get away during the daytime met in the evenings and shared the work of the senior group until the Circle was disbanded in 1983. Memories of those Cheerful Sunshine Band years were rekindled by the group singing their song “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam” from memory these many years later at the anniversary. Gladys Brubacher, Carol Bauman and Marg Martin shared their memories of the girls’ club.

Social committee

Erb Street’s current Community Building Committee used to be named the Social Committee and it was originally the Social Committee of the Women’s Missionary Service Auxiliary (WMSA) which for years prepared and served at most of the church functions requiring food, such as funerals, and choir events. Social Committee members, along with other women, also made thousands of pies for the Relief Sale, canned for the Ontario Mennonite Bible School in Kitchener, prepared and served Manna meals for seniors once a month – all in the old kitchen which was about one-quarter the size of our present wonderful facility – and there was NO dishwasher!

Today’s WMCEC

The celebration program ended but the work continues. There truly is “so much to do.” To give you an idea of how much, Emily Hunsberger compiles a list of the crafts and projects organized by the Service Committee each year. That list is on our web site www.erbstchurch.ca, under Programs. Click on Service Projects. Quilts, comforters, health kits and school kits are made for, Mennonite Central Committee, New Hamburg Mennonite Relief Sale Quilt Auction and Craft Tent, House of Friendship, Mary’s Place and Vacation Bible School projects. Teddies for Tragedies is a knitting project with an area Anglican Church which sends knitted teddy bears to children all over the world. Another shared project is with the Waterloo County Quilters Guild. Crib-size comforters are donated to Grand River Hospital to be given to parents when a baby dies or is stillborn. The Social Committee organizes refreshments for monthly meetings and has hosted the WMCEC KW Cluster breakfast and World Day of Prayer service. Members of the Home and Special Interest Committee regularly visit senior and shut-in members. The Devotional Committee’s schedule for each meeting is also on the web site. Funds are raised by quilting for a fee for individuals, and donations from members. After expenses are covered, a substantial donation is made to the House of Friendship Camp Fund. Money from collecting Zehrs tapes are also given to the Camp Fund. For more than three decades, Erb Street’s WMSA/WMSC/WMCEC has made it possible for many children, whose parents can’t afford to send them, to have a camping experience at Hidden Acres near New Hamburg or Camp Shalom near Ayr.

Where is all this work done? Visit the church fellowship hall on the first Tuesday of the month between 9 - 4. You’ll see women stitching and pulling yarn on quilts and comforters mounted on stands. Bring your lunch – dessert is supplied by birthday “girls” of the month – and join them when they take a break to eat and have a brief formal meeting which includes devotions. Then it’s back to the needles and thread and conversation. At four o’clock, everything is put away in the storage space behind the folding doors (have you always wondered what was back there?) and the closet nearby.

Research and resources

In future, when significant anniversaries are celebrated again, resources from this 102nd will be available at the Mennonite Archives of Ontario housed at Conrad Grebel University College. Besides Path of a People, Grace used Lorraine Roth’s 1992 book Willing Service: Stories of Ontario Mennonite Women, meeting minutes and the 60th Anniversary program. Also in the archives will be the list of presidents and the various names of the women’s groups over the years, compiled for Mennonite Women Canada (MW Canada) by Ruth Jantzi, Erb Street WMCEC treasurer and Mennonite Women Canada secretary-treasurer She too used Willing Service for names in the years 1917 - 1986 and minutes and annual reports of Women’s Missionary and Service Commission (WMSC) for 1987 to 2009. New president of Women of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada, Patty Ollies, was installed at Enrichment Day, April 17, 2010, replacing Shirley Redekop who had served two terms since 2004. Erna Neufeldt from Toronto is the MW Canada president.

It is impossible to imagine what has been accomplished by all the Mennonite women’s groups since 1908!

This article appeared in the Erb Street Mennonite Church’s Spring issue of The Community.