Focus

Last fall, Elizabeth took a course from Identity Exchange , the ministry of Jamie Winship, known for his incredible testimonies of God at work in his own life. After that, Elizabeth put together a workshop to lead people in Jamie’s basic "identity exchange" process with Jesus. In her own life, Elizabeth has found it helpful to do this exercise with Jesus again and again whenever she find...

As Michael Clancy enters his eighth year as an urban missionary, he wholeheartedly dedicates himself to helping men transition from prison and programs back into society. Back in 2016, he met Shawn, a man with long hair and a warm smile. Shawn first attended Michael's Bible studies at the Lebanon County Correctional Facility, and soon after, he became part of their congregation through the Life Ch...

In his few years of ministry, Austin Zuercher has repeatedly seen this happen: he makes what he thinks is a well-thought-out plan, and in the end, it changes. He can choose to follow the vision God has given him and move forward, or step back due to obstacles. Every single time, Austin has observed that despite challenges, when the team steps forward in faith, God makes things more beautiful than...

The Anabaptist movement celebrates its 500th anniversary this year. In these five centuries, Anabaptist churches have been multiplied around the world, making it a truly global movement. In fact, current statistics from Mennonite World Conference show that there are 2.1 million baptized Anabaptist church members around the world. Of that 2.1 million, only 28 percent of members are from the U.S. or...

Jeremy and Jennifer* are EMM regional representatives for Southeast Asia. Their theme for this year has been ‘brokering relationships’. This is a new term Jeremy learned during a 20-hour road trip with an amazing group of people in the highlands of Vietnam. Jeremy and Jennifer have always seen relationships as the means and the ends of what they do in cross-cultural work. But as they understand th...

Lena Kauffman served as a participant in the 2023–24 Advance cohort. She is currently serving as an Advance staff intern for the 2024–25 Advance team. So what inspired Lena to stay on as Advance staff? As Lena approached the end of her outreach, she found herself contemplating two options: returning to serve or going to college. She struggled to decide until she realized she could pursue both simu...

Rat intestines for lunch, anyone? Wear a matching shirt with your host family. Sit on the floor for hours. Find creative ways to communicate when there is no shared language. Tag along on a hospital visit, a wedding, visiting neighbors, worshiping in outlying villages, helping sell grilled meat. These are just a few of the new experiences that participants in the new Isaan Doorways Program have ha...

In 2022, we set a new strategic focus for our work through 2028. This strategic focus, the Kingdom Multiplication Vision, is something with which we are diligently engaging to see people come to know Jesus. This episode of Focus serves as a way to update you on the progress we are making, and also to highlight the room for opportunity that we have together in our work of sharing Christ’s transform...

Jen Hoover, her husband, Daryl, and their sons serve with EMM and VidaNet in Costa Rica. This Focus is looking at a beautiful reflection written by Jen about another employee with VidaNet and how Jesus' light shines through her.

A soccer club has provided Genie* with amazing opportunities to connect with kids and share the gospel. She has had the chance to lead the end-of-club devotional/encouragement and was able to share a lesson about how we are all created unique and special to God. This was a special moment she will remember with much joy.

Sarah prayed, “Dear Lord, if it is in your will please allow the door to be opened so we can go into her house and pray for her and her family.” Just as soon as those words had come out of Sarah’s mouth, the little girl Sarah was praying about, and her mother walked by. It was God’s perfect timing....

“That would be the worst job in the world!” EMM worker Elizabeth* thought to herself the first time she heard of “recruiting full-time intercessors to join overseas church-planting teams.” She pictured the full-time intercessor locked up in a room from 9 to 5 with lists of all the problems in the country, reading these lists out loud to God over and over again. But now, she calls it the best job i...

Sarah Ariola has now been in the Gambia for several months, and she is experiencing living in community in West Africa on a new level. She and the rest of the EMM team pretty much do everything together. They even share a meal in one bowl called a "community bowl.”

Throughout this month, God has been showing Ana Borntrager that living overseas is not a big profound thing; it’s simply navigating mundane life in a new context. She finds it amusing how, as Christians, people tend to put missions up on a pedestal. For Ana, it’s about learning how to relate to the people around her, navigating the basic necessities of life, and sharing everyday experiences.

Exciting changes are happening with Carissa Sherer as Hope for Home is preparing to move to its new location in the town of Parramos. The moving day is February 12, and it will be quite the ordeal, as they move 13 children with special needs, as well as all of the items necessary to care for them.

Despite having heard the gospel for many years, Biak remained a committed Buddhist. An intelligent man who likes to learn, he explored aspects of Christianity at times, but he was not convinced ... until 2024.

EMM workers Owen and Abby* had just begun a new assignment in a different country in Southeast Asia. Owen and Abby are currently doing language learning at a YWAM base in their current country. They were able to join in some of the ministry to a local village. They celebrated one person choosing to follow Jesus.

If you pass by 450 North Prince Street in Lancaster, you might think it’s just another office building with a coffee shop on the first floor. You might even think that Lancaster doesn’t need another building like this one, even if the coffee and tea are excellent. But that would be an incorrect assumption … because of other activities that you might not notice. Every Tuesday and Thursday morning a...

Ana Borntrager, who is participating in EMM’s Advance program recently arrived safely in Cambodia for the outreach portion of the program. Advance is a 9-month, gap-year program to connect and grow with a team of young adults in a cross-cultural setting through hands-on discipleship training, ongoing mentoring, and missional outreach.

This season we’re reminded of Jesus' birth. An EMM worker named Elizabeth (whose last name we can’t mention due to sensitivity concerns), wrote a beautiful poem about how Jesus' birth calls us to proclaim his life, death, and resurrection to all people around the world.

EMM worker Tim Groff had the opportunity to sit beside Pastor Victor Gonzales on a long van drive from Managua to the village of Orinoco on the Caribbean coast and listen to his stories. As they traveled with other Garifuna pastors from Honduras, they heard amazing stories of faith; the tales of how God had sustained the church among the people living there.

Now, the Advance participants get to take many of these cross-cultural learnings that they gained in Lancaster with the Neighbors Community Center and grow in their learning internationally. One team will go to Cambodia in Southeast Asia and the other team will be going to the Gambia in West Africa.

Today’s Focus is pulled from our Archives — a beautiful poem called “To Give Thanks” written by Daisy Yoder, who with her husband, served with EMM in Ethiopia for more than 20 years. They wrote in 1974 about how they would spend sleepless hours under their shelter in the desert wondering and praying about the mission in the Danakil region of Ethiopia.

If you would like to support EMM’s work of training, we invite you to join us by partnering financially. We encourage you to make a gift to EMM’s Impact Fund by December 31. You can give online . We are so thankful for your continued generosity!

North American Vietnamese Mennonites and EMM began to reengage with the church in Vietnam in the 1990s, spurring on a new season of growth. The church was legally registered and recognized by the government in 2007. Since then, the church continues to see lives transformed and ministry multiplied. In fact, the church has grown more than 400% since 2020.