It’s an early spring morning, and the songbirds are claiming their territories around the croplands and pastures here between the hamlet of Clarence Center and the Village of Akron. Sunlight is shimmering in the dewy air, and the sodden landscape is a palette of muddy and dull earth tones. But the snowdrops have bloomed, and the daffodils are beginning to show their colors. At the Clarence Center-Akron Mennonite Church, the quilters are at work on their handcrafts.
"These small tied quilts, are 60 by 80, normally, and they will go to our headquarters down near Lancaster, and then they are shipped to different countries," says Sandi Meyers, one of the church members. "We actually have two or three that are yellow and blue that were made especially for Ukraine."
German-speaking Mennonite families from the Lancaster, PA area began to settle on both sides of the Niagara after the American Revolutionary War. A Mennonite congregation was established in Clarence Center in the 1820s and a stone meeting house called the Good Mennonite Church was built. Several communities would form over the ensuing decades with other meeting houses that have also been lost to time. Then a new wave of Mennonite families began to arrive in the 1920s, and it was in 1923 that this congregation was founded.
Six rows by eight, each square features an embroidered state flower for each of the then 48 states with the name of each quilter sewn in and framed in olive green, a symbol of peace and new life.
Meyers says many in the church today come from traditional Mennonite families but that she and others come from diverse backgrounds. She and her husband had a 30-acre beef cattle and blueberry farm in Friendship. They were long associated with the American Sunday School Union and the Wesleyans at Houghton College where her husband worked and their boys earned their undergraduate degrees.
Their eldest son is now the pastor at the Levant Wesleyan Church in Falconer. Their second eldest is a Wycliffe Missionary who works in Indonesia. Their youngest is the pastor here at the Clarence Center-Akron Mennonite Church.
Dale Meyers has been pastor here since the spring of 2009. Everyone calls him Pastor Dale, though he says the children like to call him P-D. He says when he was 12 years old, he chose the path that led him here.
"I believe God spoke to me in one of those ways as I was sitting around a campfire, and he presented me with a choice," says Pastor Dale. "It wasn’t an audible voice that I heard, but it was the fire, as we were sitting around the last fire at church camp that we at, and it was like, 'Dale, you can hold onto your anger, and head towards a life of destruction, like you’ve seen other people do, or you can forgive, and follow me, and I’ll show you the way.'"
Pastor Dale says his anger stemmed from the difficult upbringing his mother had endured. She and her eight younger siblings had been abandoned by their father, and he says he hated his grandfather for that. He says his mother’s life story has been a force on his pathway.
"I think for me what drew me to the Mennonite church is the centrality of Christ’s words," says Pastor Dale, "that Jesus not only provided us teaching and atonement, but he provided us an example to follow. So, when he talks about forgiveness, that’s a big deal. When Mennonites pray, 'Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,' we take that very seriously. The peace and justice are, I would say, distinctively Mennonite."
Among the various Mennonite groups, Pastor Dale explains there is a spectrum of observances, and some communities reject the use of modern technology. Pastor Dale’s church is fully in synch. All his services are online, and those at home participate remotely.
It’s Sunday morning, just after dawn. The Good Cemetery on Greiner Road in Clarence is near the site of the original Mennonite meeting house. Less than a mile away is the signature Pennsylvania German-style barn from the 1830s of a Mennonite Bishop who led the first congregation.
On Easter morning, Pastor Meyers will lead a sunrise service here in the cemetery including a responsive reading based on the Scriptures, the songs “Low in the Grave” and “Christ Who Left His Home in Glory,” some silent reflection, and a closing prayer.
"For me, the resurrection is the key time of the year for followers of Jesus, from my perspective," says Pastor Meyers. "To me, it’s like a new year. It’s a chance to reorient to the foundation of what we celebrate. I think it’s a great place to start your Resurrection Sunday morning. Usually, the cemetery is a place of tears and goodbyes, but we never have to say goodbye to Jesus."