Photo by Regina Roberts Moderator Belita Mitchell (center) and moderator-elect Jim Beckwith share a moment of humor during the opening business session. At left is Conference secretary Fred Swartz.

Photo by Glenn Riegel Don and Belita Mitchell pose in front of the Annual Conference 2007 logo banner proclaiming the power of God.

Photo by Keith Hollenberg Youth shared insights about peacemaking at an evening session on "Youth Speak Out" sponsored by On Earth Peace.

Photo by Jesse Reid Youth and young adults were prominent participants in a Brethren peace witness and march through downtown Cleveland.

Annual Conference moderator Belita Mitchell makes history
Belita D. Mitchell has made history as the first African-American woman, and the first female African-American ordained minister, to moderate the annual meeting of the Church of the Brethren. Mitchell serves as pastor of First Church of the Brethren in Harrisburg, Pa.

The Conference moderator serves in the highest elected position in the Church of the Brethren, which is a volunteer position. In Cleveland, Mitchell is leading a delegate body of hundreds of representatives of congregations from across the US and Puerto Rico, and a Standing Committee of representatives of the denomination’s 23 districts.

In an telephone interview before the Conference began, she said she hopes Conference-goers come prepared by prayer. The preparation of prayer “helps us to embody more openly and visibly what it means to be the body of Christ,” she said. “If we were to come ‘prayed up,’ then we’ll be more open to see what God has for us to do.”

Belita Mitchell and her spouse of 35 years, Don Mitchell, live in Mechanicsburg, Pa. Don Mitchell is a retired business owner and serves as director of Church Development for Atlantic Northeast District. The Mitchells are the parents of four children and four grandchildren. They have three surviving children, Sanya Ward-Wallace of Fontana, Calif., Kym Mitchell-Moore of Seattle, Wash., and Don-Valliant Mitchell of Mechanicsburg. Grandchildren are Noelle, Shannon, Marcus, and Serenity.

Mitchell was born Belita D. Brewington in Colp, Ill. She received her elementary education in Detroit, Mich., and completed high school and college in southern Illinois. She received a bachelor of arts degree from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

She is a second career ministerial leader, following a 30-year career in professional sales with a Fortune 100 company. Her first pastorate was at Imperial Heights Church of the Brethren in Los Angeles. Her ministry training was completed through the Training in Ministry program of the Brethren Academy for Ministerial Leadership, and included coursework at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. While in California, she was active in Pacific Southwest District, and served on the Board of Directors of Brethren Hillcrest Homes in La Verne.

Her denominational service has included a term on the Committee on Interchurch Relations, and participation in the Cross Cultural Ministries Steering Committee. She was one of the Church of the Brethren representatives to the Anabaptist Consultation on Alternative Service in 2005.

Mitchell’s request continues to be for prayer, as she leads the Church of the Brethren this year. “I’m asking everyone to pray for me, that I’ll be able to keep it together,” she said.

--Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford

Youth have a lot of insight about peace
Jonathan Ulrich, Dustin Chew, Audrey Hollenberg, and Chrissy Sollenberger shared at the Sunday night insight session entitled, “Youth Speak Out: What Is Our Peace Witness About?”

The four youth fielded discussion questions from moderator Susanna Farahat of On Earth Peace and then took questions from audience members. They shared about the various ways they personally work to create peace, which included taking care of the environment, consciously including outsiders, reaching out to soldiers returning from war, and sharing the biblical basis of the peace position.

Said one of the youth, “The question is not where can Brethren peacemakers [be in witness], but really where can’t we be? ...Everywhere someone is needed to bring the peace of Christ.”

The role of family and church in influencing the speakers towards peacemaking was strongly affirmed. The youth all spoke of the witness that pacifists in their family and their church had had upon them.

--Sarah Leatherman Young

Heifer Project’s seagoing cowboys and their legacy
They changed the world as they delivered livestock to devastated regions in Europe, China, and Africa following World War II, but they themselves were changed as well, transformed into teachers, preachers, lifelong volunteers, and anti-war activists. They were the “seagoing cowboys” who helped to make Heifer Project a reality, and seven were on hand along with about 150 others to listen to Peggy Reiff Miller tell a part of their story.

Miller as a child never bothered to ask her grandfather about his Heifer Project trip to Poland while he was alive, but she has devoted the last five years of her life to researching the stories behind the founding of Heifer Project. She has published four articles, and is working on a young adult novel as well as a nonfiction book on the subject.

She credits the blossoming and survival of Heifer Project to five things. First, it began with a simple but dynamic idea, based on Dan West’s realization while engaged in relief work during the Spanish Civil War that the starving needed not a cup but a cow. “It sounded simple,” she said, “but it was no simple undertaking.” She added that with Heifer Project “the idealists had finally won out over the realists.”

The second factor was leadership. She credited the visionary Dan West, the salesman and promoter M.R. Zigler, and the practical administrator Benjamin Bushong with together making the dream a reality. The third factor was the grassroots nature of the project. Fourth was the ecumenical nature of the program, present from the start. And the fifth, the subject of her presentation, were the seagoing cowboys, more than 7,000 volunteers who in two years following World War II shepherded 360 shipments of donated animals to the wartorn regions.

Miller included a DVD montage of photographs as part of her presentation, providing graphic documentation of their hard work, high spirits, and spiritual influence on all they encountered. Introduced afterwards were Ivan Patterson, Bill Longenecker, David Brightbill, Marlo Ottman, Conrad Snavely, Ken Holdereed, Winfield Knechel, and Ken Kreider.

--Frank Ramirez

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