Friends and supporters commission Alan and Carol Wert and their three children, Dylan, Cerys, Brenin, for another term of service in Wales. The Werts have served in the Welsh Valleys for the past nine years. Photo by Tammy Evans.

LANCASTER, Pa. – At an inspirational commissioning service for 74 short-and long-term workers, July 6, Eastern Mennonite Missions also honored six elderly missionary veterans who had begun service in the 1940s.

In a testimony at the Commissioning, Travis and Bekii Kisamore, a young couple who recently completed a year-long mission internship in Chile, said that although they felt overwhelmed to think of themselves as “church planters,” they loved building relationships with people on the islands outside Puerto Montt – and a church is beginning.

In tributes to those who have gone before – enabling the service of young missionaries like the Kisamores – EMM president Richard Showalter presented the Presidential Commitment Award to Norman Shenk, for his more than 50 years of service in various roles in the EMM home office.

“Norman and his wife Jean have quietly set an unusually high standard for generous giving, returning to EMM more than they ever received in allowances and salaries,” Showalter said.

The Impact Award for Short-term Mission and Service went to Harold and Alma Shultz, early Voluntary Service workers in Norma, New Jersey, who have been lifetime mission enthusiasts, hosts, and mobilizers.

Mahlon and Mary Hess received the Elam W. Stauffer Pioneer Mission Award for the focus of their work in education and medicine in Tanzania. Mahlon oversaw the development of 25 primary schools, a secondary school, and girls’ boarding school. In her medical work with leprosy and other tropical diseases, Mary designed a prosthesis (wooden leg) which is still in use today.

EMM also honored, in absentia, Simeon and the late Edna Hurst, who served in Tanzania pioneering in linguistic and translation work among the Kuria people.

In his commissioning challenge, Showalter reminded the 74 out-going workers along with hundreds of their friends and supporters in the Lancaster Mennonite School Fine Arts Center, that as we move out to places like Turkey, the Czech Republic, China, or north India, “we walk in the power of the resurrection.”

“The Western church has traditionally emphasized the cross of Christ,” he said, “and rightly it should be stressed. But the New Testament apostles as well as the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century didn’t stop at the cross. They centered on ‘walking in the resurrection’ and the ‘new creation’.”

- Jewel Showalter

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