A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

el. In 1971 a group separated from the Virgil congregation to form the Orchard Park Bible Church. During the Second World War many M.B. families took up residence in the "Garden City" of Canada, St. Catharines. A congregation was organized here in 1943 under the leadership of Gerhard J. Epp. The church, located on Scott Street, has experienced a steady growth, partly as a result of immigration from Paraguay, so that today (1971), it is the largest M.B. congregation in Ontario." Henry Penner, who became the pastor of the church in 1953, has provided able leadership through the years and still serves the congregation today (1972). This probably constitutes a record for length of term of service in the present era. 174 HISTORY OF THE MENNONITE BRETHREN CHURCH Because of rapid and continued growth, a second congregation was organized in this city in 1964, know as the Fairview M.B. Church. Harvey C. Gossen has been the leader of this church almost from the time of its inception. More city churches were organized in the sixties in the Kitchener-Waterloo area: the Zion M.B. Church in 1964, and the Waterloo M.B. Church in 1967. A few years earlier, in 1961, a Mennonite Brethren church had also been established in the large metropolitan city of Toronto, the capital of the province. In 1945 the Home Missions Committee of Ontario began an inten- sive outreach program in several areas of the province. In 1951 a work was begun at Coldwater in an Anglo-Saxon district with Mr. and Mrs. H.H. Dick as pioneer workers. The Hampshire (formerly Coldwater) M.B. Church was received into the Canadian Conference in 1961. During the same year also the Stoney Creek M.B. Church (near Hamilton) was admitted into the conference after six years of mission work in that area. 5 " VII. Mennonite Brethren Come to Quebec The story of the expansion of the M.B. Church in Canada would be incomplete without a brief survey of the origins of the French-speaking congregations in Quebec, Canada's oldest and largest province. The Canadian Conference became more aware of the great spiritual needs of the French-Catholics in Quebec through Mennonite Brethren missionaries to the Congo (now Zaire) who spent some time in language study there between 1949 and 1959. When in the summer of 1960 all missionaries had to be withdrawn from the Congo, the Canada Inland Mission Committee of the M. B. Conference asked the Ernest Dycks to begin a ministry of evangelism and church planting in Quebec. The Dycks consented and thus became the Mennonite Brethren pioneers in Quebec. In consultation with Henry Warkentin, the chairman of the Canada Inland Mission Committee, St. Jerome was selected as the first field of labor. The Dycks took up residence in St. Jerome in August, 1961. After three years of faithful "planting and watering," the harvest came in 1964. In June of that year the first baptismal services were held, and in October the first M. B.