In January, when the CT editors selected Anabaptists for this year’s focus on an American religious group (pp. 25–36), assistant editor Timothy Jones made immediate plans to attend the World Mennonite Conference in Winnipeg. Unfortunately, he didn’t make his airline reservations quite that soon. Two weeks before the conference, one travel agent could not find a flight for Tim. Another managed to get him in only late at night, the day after the conference began. The airlines were strained to capacity by 13,000 Mennonites trying to arrive within a day or two from places as remote as the Philippines and Zaire. The World Mennonite Conference, held only every six years, turned out to be the largest convention ever held in Manitoba’s capital city.
Surprisingly, Tim had no trouble finding a hotel room. The city’s hostelry expected full hotels and empty bars. As it turned out, about 6,000 visiting Mennonites stayed in private homes, causing the downtown Holiday Inn, the hotel closest to the hub of the conference, to fill only 150 of the 250 rooms it had set aside for the conference, and the Sheraton Winnipeg to slash its conference room block in half.
Anabaptists who travel frequently talk about “Mennoniting Your Way”—that is, finding hospitality from fellow believers. Winnipeg is at the center of the planet’s largest concentration of Mennonites—with 20,000 living in Winnipeg itself and 40,000 in the surrounding area. That meant a heap o’ hospitality was available. And because of the unique sociology of Anabaptists, Mennonites who meet fellow heirs of Menno often discover they are related by blood or marriage. No doubt, the Winnipeg conference was for many not only a spiritual tonic, but a family reunion.
