A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

has been a sizeable transient membership, with no large permanent M. B. residential group in Los Angeles. 15 This congregation on South Hoover Street has become extinct, but a mission church {City Terrace) established among Jews and Catholics in East Los Angeles in 1926, has manifested a healthy growth as an inter-racial fellowship. Other city churches were established in central California. The San Jose M. B. Church was organized with twenty charter members in 1940. Although the church had to relocate several times, it has grown to a 148 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH membership of four hundred at present (1971). The largest number of urban congregations, however, have been established in the city of Fresno. Beginning with the Bethany M.B. Church in 1942, there has been a continual growth of the M.B. population in the city so that at present there are six organized congregations: Bethany, Butler, Clovis (a suburb), Faith, North Fresno, and West Park. One of these (Faith) is a Spanish-speaking congregation, largely composed of Mexican-Amer- icans. The location of two conference schools, Pacific College and the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, within the city of Fresno, no doubt is an important factor in this heavy concentration of Mennonite Brethren here. More recently churches have also have been founded in Visalia, Kingsburg, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sacramento, the state capital. Another group of Mennonites, which included a fairly large number of Mennonite Brethren, came to California in 1930 — not from the Midwest, but from the Far East. Many of these "displaced persons" from various parts of Russia had been at the "Gates of Moscow" in 1929, when the door of escape to the West was suddenly closed. They eventually made their way to the Amur settlement in eastern Siberia. From here they fled across the Amur River during the winter of 1929-30 to Harbin, China. Through the mediation of P. C. Hiebert, chairman of MCC, 256 of these refugees were able to come to the United States. Here most of them eventually settled near Reedley.' 8 The rapid expansion and material progress of M. B. congregations, and their exposure to all the religious crosscurrents for which California has become known, pose special problems for the stability and spiritual identity of Mennonite Brethren in this stale. Denominational training centers, therefore, are of special significance in meeting these needs and in providing the theological leadership which such a situation demands. The churches of California have through the years shown a great interest in missions, and many workers have been commissioned for various fields in the "regions beyond." Oregon Some of the first M.B. families moving to the Pacific Coast settled near Dalian in the beautiful Willamette Valley in central Oregon. Already in 1891 a small group was organized as a congregation with the assistance of Elder Voth from Minnesota.