Finding My Way: A Harvest of Memories

By Edgar Stoesz

"This is not to suggest that my life has in any way been extraordinary. This book is about more than me. It is about God at work in the world through ordinary people, doing extraordinary things through such organizations as the Mennonite Central Committee, Habitat For Humanity, Heifer Project, the American Leprosy Missions and many more." - Edgar Stoesz

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edgar Stoesz
• Release date: Sep 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310829949

Book preview

Finding My Way

A Harvest of Memories

We live in the present,

but we live better when we see the present

arising from the past, with an eye to the future.

by Edgar Stoesz

with a foreword by Robert Kreider

FINDING MY WAY: A Harvest of Memories

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Edgar Stoesz

929 Broad St., Akron, PA 17501-1441

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

This is an autobiography and thus a true account, with some re-created dialogue. The author was born in Minnesota, yet the story reaches into all the continents except for Australia and Antarctica.

ISBN: 978-1-60126-429-9

Library of Congress Number: 2014910999

Printed at

Masthof Press

219 Mill Road

Morgantown, PA 19543-9516

I dedicate this book to

Gladys Dick Stoesz (1932–2010),

my wife and companion for 58 years

my children,

Susan, Dean, Randall, and Kristine

my grandchildren,

Matthew, Laura, Libby, David, Becca, Connor, Ben

Anna Fast Stoesz (1899–1991),

my mother

and

Dietrich D. Stoesz (1899–1966),

my father

~ Finding Our Way ~

We seek and search to find our way,

To hear Christ’s call, we daily pray.

Our quest is earnest and sincere,

The path ahead yet so unclear.

Then from the mist a way appears;

We venture it with hope and tears.

Now this must be the way for me;

So this is what was meant to be.

And then the way grows dim and stark;

It is so steep, the night so dark.

There must be yet a better way

To here invest my earthly stay.

Are there not still so many ways?

Must pathways always be a maze?

As doubts and questions flood our souls,

We struggle on, to meet our goals.

Yet Jesus said, "I am the way!

Now follow me, and do not stray!"

We find him with us, yet disguized;

He guides in ways not recognized.

- Edgar Stoesz

May 5, 2014

~ Acknowledgments ~

Robert S. Kreider is deservedly first to be acknowledged since it was his encouragement and persistence that brought this book into being. Then he graced it with an eloquent foreword.

David Garber, with copy-editor thoroughness and professional competence, took my work and made it more understandable.

Frank Peachey, Lori Wise, and Brenda Burkholder generously opened the MCC archives and picture collection.

Naomi Wyble, Urbane Peachey, Elmer Wall, Ruth Keidel Clemens, Ruth Weaver, and Richard Weaver, in addition to my children, read all or parts of what I wrote and offered helpful suggestions.

Joe Peifer, my nephew, kept my vintage computer running and helped with pictures. He discovered the cover photo that so eloquently illustrates my journey in Finding My Way.

Cal Redekop, Ruth Weaver, John Sharp, and Don Mosley read the manuscript under time pressure and generously gave readers a brief preview of what to expect.

Most of all, my gratitude goes to Masthof Press, and particularly Lois Ann Mast, for patience beyond the call of duty in bringing script, pictures, and notes together and making it into a readable book.

To all a hearty Thank You!

~ Edgar Stoesz

~ Contents ~

Dedication

Epigraph Poem: Finding Our Way

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Robert S. Kreider

Preface

Abbreviations

1.The Journey Begins (1929-52)

2.Joined on the Journey (1952-56)

3.Picking Up Speed (1956-69)

4.Cruising on Overdrive (1970-82)

5.Recalculating the Route (1983-87)

6.The Journey Onward (1987-95)

7.Destination or Rest Stop? (1996-)

Afterword

Exhibits

I Am Retired Now

Little-Known Facts about Me

Books by Edgar Stoesz

Proverbs by Edgar

Countries I’ve Visited

Notes

~ Foreword ~

In his autobiography, Finding My Way, Edgar Stoesz invites the reader to join him in reviewing his journey through the last sixty years of fascinating Mennonite history. His story begins in the Great Depression in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, a community once home to nine Mennonite churches. All of his four grandparents are Mennonite immigrants from the Ukraine, so Edgar grew up in a devout Plautdietsch-speaking home: Mennonite Low German was the mother tongue. With his wife, Gladys, from a neighboring farm, he envisioned for the two a life he loved: farming. But it was not to be.

Conscription interrupted these plans: first, as a conscientious objector (CO) he was called into alternative service with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Allentown, Pennsylvania, then tapped to direct an expanding community of CO volunteers in Topeka, Kansas. With that finished, he went back to Mountain Lake. Soon MCC recalled him, this time to Akron, Pennsylvania, to head a voluntary service program threatened by persistent deficits. When the job was finished, he and Gladys returned to Mountain Lake. Again another call to Akron extended to 35 years of service. Edgar, then 27, never returned to a life on that 200-acre Minnesota farm.

A farm boy with no college, soon Edgar was receiving an on-the-job higher education. Pressed from tough assignment to tough assignment, MCC became his school of learning. So it was also for Gladys and their four children and for thousands of MCC volunteers and their families. In an intense life, Edgar was on the road as much as a hundred days a year. His whole family inescapably became engaged in MCC service.

By 1959 Edgar was directing three dissimilar MCC programs: domestic voluntary service, integration of a variety of mutual aid insurance companies into a viable fiscal enterprise, and a range of services in a Haiti with an array of daunting problems. A teacher placement program in Newfoundland became a model for the Teachers Abroad Program that emerged in Africa. We observe him coping with programs with deficits, earning for farm-boy Edgar the brand of a hard-nosed businessman.

We follow Edgar and MCC from a success here, a frustration there, to a series of new challenges: addressing endemic poverty and disease in Appalachia, establishing a presence in Atlanta in support of the civil rights movement, working together with Mennonites in Paraguay coping with the task of development in the Chaco bush, and guiding MCC’s move from emergency food distribution to long-term food development. We watch MCC treading carefully as it grapples with problems that have no easy answers.

As Latin America Secretary for the MCC, Edgar describes how MCC’s work expanded from Paraguay into Latin America and the Caribbean: Bolivia, Brazil, and Jamaica, and then more widely into Mexico, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Granada. The MCC story in Latin America has been filled with the unexpected. Old Colony Mennonites arrived in Bolivia to form a dozen communities that have grown to 50,000. In 1979 a hurricane slashed into the Dominican Republic, leaving thousands homeless; MCC soon built 497 houses and a church in the wake of the destruction. The number of MCC workers in Latin America almost doubled.

In 1975, Edgar was called to another career: Director of Food and Development and Secretary for all MCC overseas programs. For him, life was then on the go, with an annual visit to each field program, to listen, help with problems, absorb field frustrations, and encourage the volunteers. By the 1980s, MCC confronted a persistent problem: money more abundant but, without conscription, a decline in volunteers. Edgar acknowledges mission board irritations with MCC’s perceived expansive, freewheeling ways. A Council of Mission Board Secretaries (COMBS) was formed to help cultivate MCC-mission mutuality. In the complementary programming among missions, Mennonite World Conference, and MCC, one observes a subtle undergirding of word and deed, mission and service, body and soul. Edgar gratefully details how Orie Miller and William Snyder, long-term MCC Executive Secretaries, were his mentors who helped him find his way. Immersed in a satisfying but intense life with MCC, it was a great time to be alive.

After thirty-five years, Edgar’s MCC chapter ended. Staff changes left him with a sense of being abandoned. He shares his pain and depression in departing from MCC. But a new chapter opened for Edgar that was full of fresh challenges, creativity, ecumenical inclusiveness. The MCC years had prepared him for a new calling.

Habitat for Humanity, with its expanding global program, beckoned; he was named chair of its board, thereupon thrust into mediating a crisis in leadership. Edgar was called to chair two more boards undergoing transition: the American Leprosy Mission and, in Haiti, Hospital Albert Schweitzer. After fifty years of MCC presence, Haiti remains a land with problems that elude easy solution. We observe him with hammer, building houses alongside President Jimmy Carter. A flow of tasks filled his retirement years: moderator of the Atlantic Coast Conference, which was then losing congregations; leading tours to Paraguay and Europe; authoring twelve books; on the road for lecturing; and much more.

Remembering his Mountain Lake roots, he wrote books on his immigrant grandparents and the life of Gladys, his resilient partner through fifty-eight intense years. Debilitating illness crept into their good life: with grace, Gladys was enduring the pain of Parkinson’s disease. Then Gladys was gone. In gratitude, the words of an old Gospel hymn came to Edgar’s mind: My life flows on in endless song. . . . Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing? (Robert Lowry, 1869).

Finding My Way is a fascinating story of a Mountain Lake youth, Edgar Stoesz, called from a farm to leadership in the MCC, grappling with daunting global issues of hunger and violence. He found himself enrolled in a school of learning, the Mennonite Central Committee—not for four years and a degree, but for four decades and a life mission. He found his gift: an ability to energize programs in stress. This is more than Edgar’s story: we are offered a front-row view of Mennonites in a troubled but hopeful world, seeking to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Here is an invitation to join in finding our way.

- Robert S. Kreider, longtime member of

the MCC Executive Committee,

developer of relief and service programs,

fifth President of Bluffton College

March 18, 2014

~ Preface ~

Finding My Way—is that not what life is all about?

We begin our lives with a certificate of birth but no road map or even a road. Our never-ending task is to find our way. No one can do it for us. There are bumps and curves, hills and valleys. There are head-winds and tailwinds. There are dangers and picturesque sights along the way. There is tedium yet also surprises that we enjoy reliving and retelling. We lose our way and hear that virtual GPS saying Recalculating. So we make a course correction, and then we are on our way again. Finally we end up in that parking lot of memories. Here we meet and reminisce with others who too are on a journey.

In Finding My Way I have tried to capture the main themes of my life and to record them in a way that may be of benefit to others, especially my family. That is not to suggest that my life has in any way been extraordinary. This book is about more than me. It is about God at work in the world through ordinary people, doing extraordinary things through organizations like Mennonite Central Committee, Habitat for Humanity, Heifer Project, American Leprosy Missions, and more. Finding My Way is a peek into how organizations function and a mini-narrative of the times in which I lived, although unavoidably from my perspective.

In writing my story, I have done what I had long said I would not do. In 2013 a number events conspired to draw me into putting this story together. I had a window of time; I had written the story of a friend, so why not my own? At that time several of my acquaintances wrote their memoirs, so I eased into it—and enjoyed it more than I had anticipated.

Writing an autobiography is a time to remember, to reflect, to rejoice—yes, and to regret, wishing we could do it all over again. It is a time to relive the high moments and put the low moments into perspective; to share our experience with others who are beginning their journey, hoping they can learn from our experience.

The challenge in writing autobiography is not so much to find things to write about as in finding things that are worth writing about, and to do so with reasonable accuracy and objectivity. This I have attempted to do, but the book you are holding is without doubt as imperfect as the life it chronicles. Adding to the challenge is that what to one reader is excessive detail leaves another reader wanting more. This is inevitable and can only be dealt with by giving the reader permission to speed-read past anything that is not of interest.

My life has been so closely intertwined with Mennonite Central Committee that I needed to remind myself repeatedly that this is my personal story, not a history of MCC. My former MCC colleagues will understand when I say that my first focus is family. My family will understand that MCC, and the other organizations I served, were an important part of my life. In the process of addressing these two worlds, my book grew longer than I intended.

My highest hope is that in reading this book you will find God in the Shadows, keeping watch over one of God’s own.

- Edgar Stoesz

May 5, 2014

~ Abbreviations ~

AARM Association of Anabaptist Risk Management

ALM American Leprosy Missions

AMC Akron Mennonite Church

CEO chief executive officer

CIDA Canadian International Development Agency

COMBS Council of Mission Board Secretaries

CPS Civilian Public Service

CRM Conference-Related Ministries

EMB Evangelical Mennonite Brethren (to 1989; then FEBC)

ESL English as a second language

FEBC Fellowship of Evangelical Bible Churches (from 1989)

GC General Conference Mennonites

GMCC Goodville Mutual Casualty Company

GPA grade point average

HAS Hôpital [Hospital] Albert Schweitzer (in Haiti)

HPI Heifer Project International

ILEP International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations

IMO Internationale Mennonitische Organisation

IVEP International Visitor Exchange Program

KGB (Soviet) State Security Committee

KJV King James Version

MAF Missionary Aviation Fellowship

MARTA Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority

MB Mennonite Brethren

MC Mennonite Church

MCC Mennonite Central Committee

MCUSA Mennonite Church (from 2001)

MDT multidrug therapy

MEDA Mennonite Economic Development Associates

MII Mennonite Indemnity, Incorporated

MTS Menno Travel Service

NIV New International Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

OCC Olde Country Connections, LLC

PAX Peace [and service program, overseas VS]

PCRRG Peace Church Risk Retention Group

PTA Parent-Teacher Association

SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference

SHC Self-Help Crafts

TAP Teachers Abroad Program

TM TourMagination

USAID U.S. Agency for International Development

VS Voluntary Service

~ Chapter 1 ~

The Journey Begins

(1929-52)

My Birth and Early Years

Jakob knew he was nearing his destination when, after walking for 135 days, he saw trees in the distance. Suddenly villages transformed the almost peopleless countryside with familiar black-and-white cows grazing in the pasture. Jakob Stoesz was the thirteenth of seventeen children, the only one of them to join the exodus from West Prussia to Ukraine. We do not know why he chose to leave and not the rest of his family, nor why now and not sooner, or maybe not at all? We can only imagine that it was a difficult decision that would separate him from the rest of his family permanently.¹

He had no compass, no maps, no GPS. In 1817 there were no marked roads or lodging reservations. Yet the route was relatively simple, through mostly open country. He walked toward the rising sun until he reached the Dnieper River. Then he followed the Dnieper in a southerly direction until he reached the thirteen-year-old Mennonite Chortitza Colony. There was no predetermined schedule. For three months, from sunrise to darkness, in rain or heat, he trudged as far as his energy could carry him. Then he made a comfortable nest, slept there, and rose for another day.

In Chortitza the thirty-seven-year-old Jakob was invited to live with the Gerhard Wiebe family, which included a stepdaughter Sara only a little more than half his age. They married and soon they were overjoyed by the prospect of parenthood. But the story has a sad ending. After delivering a stillborn baby, Sara was hemorrhaging and murmured, Ich muss sterben. Ich muss sterben [I must die], just before she took her last breath.

Within the year Jakob married the twenty-year-old Barbara Wiens. In the space of nineteen years, they had twelve children, the eleventh being Johann, who would become my great-great-grandfather.

Jakob died in 1850 at the ripe age of 70. In 1877 Barbara moved to Manitoba with six grown children: three daughters and three sons. This included David who became a prominent minister (bishop) in Canada. Another son, Peter, elected to remain in Russia. Our ancestor, Johann, with wife, Maria, followed his in-laws, the Heppners, to Minnesota. A daughter and six sons, the oldest of whom was Dietrich, our ancestor, accompanied them. Another son, Erdman, was born in Minnesota.²

We rest the Stoesz story temporally to put alongside of it the Fast family, my maternal ancestors. It has many of the same themes. They too migrated from Holland to Prussia and then on to Molotschna Colony (neighbor to Chortitza) in Ukraine. Life was good, but the colony was running out of land. That made the list of couples wanting land intolerably long. Also at this time, the emerging Soviet government was breaching promises made to exempt Mennonites from participating in the military and to let them freely run their own schools in the German language. All this made the future uncertain. When land agents appeared and offered good farmland in the New World, Johann Fast was among those who gave them a hearing.

When the sixty-six-year-old Johann discussed relocating to this distant and unseen land, his friends expressed surprise: You, old and sickly as you are? They will bury you at sea. That did not deter him, so determined was he to ensure a better future for his family. His immediate family consisted of his second wife, Sara, and three thriving children: Gerhard (19), Herman (15), and Elizabeth (11).

The Fast family departed from their home in Ukraine by train on June 17, 1875. Upon arrival in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, one month later, they purchased a 160-acre farm with a few outbuildings. Father Johann felt an unexplained urgency to provide a residence for the family. He had survived the trip surprisingly well, although he was not strong enough to help with the construction. Their house was nearing completion when, on December 6, he died and was buried in a grave 500 feet from his almost-completed residence.

Gerhard Fast, my eventual grandfather, still single, helped the

family to get established on their new farm before he married and established his own farm just across the field. His wife, Helena Hamm,

was also of Prussian/Russian background. They had eleven children, of

which the second youngest was my mother Anna.³

Now the two family stories converge through the union of Dietrich Stoesz and Anna Fast, both born in the waning months of the nineteenth century. Though the farms on which they grew up were ten miles apart, they were cared for in the same church nursery, attended the same parochial school, and were baptized in the same shallow creek beside the EMB (Evangelical Mennonite Brethren) church, where they were married in 1924.

Nu es teat! With these words mother Anna roused Dad, sensing that now is the time to get themselves to the recently establish Bethel Hospital in Mountain Lake, 4.5 miles distant. Dad cranked up the Model A Ford, the likes of which had spread across the American scene like a virus. A mere five years earlier the trip would have been made in a horse-drawn carriage. Thirty-month-old Harvey was dropped off at the Fast grandparents along the way.

It’s a Boy!

So it was that I made my inauspicious entry into the world on August 10, 1929. Mother had so successfully concealed her pregnancy that even her friends were surprised at another birth.

Where they came up with the moniker Edgar Donald, I will never know. We had obviously passed from an era of Bible names like David and Paul, followed by an era of ancestral names like Johann or Gerhard for boys and Elizabeth or Katherina for girls. We were now second-generation Mennonites, albeit Plautdietsch-speaking, with modern names like Elmer, Harold, and Kenneth for boys; and Jane, Lillian, or Susie for girls.

After the customary two weeks in the hospital, mother and I returned to the newly built one-bedroom farmhouse, sans plumbing but equipped with central heating. This house would be my home base for the first 22 years of my life. It consisted of just over 850 square feet, although later it was doubled by the addition of a second story, including an indoor bathroom.

I was number 24 of the 36 grandchildren of Gerhard and