BELLEVILLE - J. Loren and Wanda Yoder traveled 20,000 miles and used 50,000 gallons of gasoline during a seven-month period as they traveled with Mennonite Central Committee's Portable canner, visiting 34 canning sites in the United States and Canada throughout the 2008-2009 canning season.
The Yoders, Big Valley farmers, sold their dairy herd and bought a travel trailer with which they traveled with the canner and crew. Back in Mifflin County, Loren now has settled into the routine of doing all the field work on the farm again.
The Belleville couple reported on their adventures with the canner at the annual meeting of the Central Pennsylvania World Hunger Association Thursday at Maple Grove Mennonite Church in Belleville, with a most recent trip to Bosnia and Serbia to help deliver canned meat to needy people. They also displayed a commemorative quilt depicting their travels and the work of Mennonite Central Committee's canning projects, which Wanda initiated.
Loren Yoder prefaced their opening with a verse from II Corinthians:8, "where Paul talks about giving generously."
Loren explained that the Central Pennsylvania World Hunger Association was originally formed as a counter to a time in the mid-1970s in which calf prices were so low that farmers in the Midwest buried 100 dead calves to draw attention to the farmers' plight.
Locals John Brockett and Clair DeLong believed there was "a better way," and the result was the effort to donate meat and can it with volunteer labor, he said. Loren added that he helped stir meat during the cooking process that first year.
With the canner
Wanda Yoder narrated a PowerPoint presentation, "Who is My Neighbor? Who Is Your Neighbor?", which covered the seven months in which the couple traveled with the canner, showing locations and people they met. She noted that they were commissioned by their home church, Maple Grove Mennonite, for their volunteer task.
Wanda peppered her presentation with a series of amusing incidents and experiences - and unexpected blessings - encountered along the way. She said she plans to write a book, which will contain "the end of the story" of incidents that she began telling with her presentation.
Over the years, the Yoders have hosted many canner crew volunteers in their home, and they had an opportunity to see some of them again during their trek.
Their Christmas break provided an opportunity to visit with relatives in western Canada.
Of their sacrifice of a year of their time for service, she said, "It's not the importance of what we do, but the love we do it with."
To Bosnia and Serbia
Loren Yoder described their seven months with the canner and crew as "great, a wonderful journey."
Then, on Sept. 30, Loren joined Mennonite Central Committee workers in Bosnia and Serbia for 10 days, distributing meat, some of which was canned locally, to the needy.
En route they visited an MCC warehouse in Amsterdam, where most of the meat is shipped, along with "shoeboxes" of items for children, for distribution in needy areas.
His adventure also was illustrated with PowerPoint.
In Bosnia, he said, MCC works with a Muslim organization, an Orthodox organization, Bread of Life of Bosnia and a Pentecostal-Baptist group.
The volunteers visited many soup kitchens in Bosnia and Serbia, including one in Belgrade that serves 10,000 meals a day and one in a neighboring village that is located in a bomb shelter.
Loren said there are no dairies in the Belgrade area, although occasionally a family would have "one cow or some sheep." They also visited a Muslim farm that includes a greenhouse.
He also highlighted some special encounters, such as bomb and machine gun damage to buildings and the fact that "cow brains" were on the menu at restaurants.
The volunteers also visited a village of the Roma people - gypsies - where he found the squalid living conditions "unreal. I never imagined people lived like this," he said.
Before returning home, Loren spent five days in Germany, visiting farmers that have visited at the Yoder farm during the years in a variety of capacities, and two former canner crew members they hosted in their home.
The quilt
In June 2008, before the Yoders left on their trek with the canner, Wanda said she mailed patches to all the sites that the canner would visit during the 2008-2009 season, asking the recipients to make a quilt patch depicting something about their specific area. She collected the squares as the canner moved through the areas.
In addition to the site squares, the four corner squares are outlines of the hands and the names of the four volunteers who were traveling with the canner for two-year terms.
A large, center square, made by Bee's Embroidery of Milroy, contains the names and home countries of all the two-year Mennonite Central Committee volunteers who traveled with the canner since the project began in 1946.
The quilt was assembled by Anna Buchanan of Buchanan Fabrics in White Hall.
A group of about 80 volunteers from Ontario, Nebraska, Ohio and "all over Pennsylvania'' gathered at Maple Grove to quilt the piece in June, Wanda said.
"They started Friday afternoon, and by Saturday afternoon, they were finished,'' she said.
"When we sent out the patches, nobody knew what they would look like. Each patch is unique, has its own story.''
With the quilt finished, volunteers at the giant quilting party were treated to a meal of bean soup and moon pies.
"When we went to all the states, nobody knew what moon pies were, at least not our kind of moon pies. So they got to eat moon pies,'' Wanda said.
The finished quilt will hang at MCC headquarters in Akron, Pa.
