Mennonite
Central
Committee

A gift of comfort, a message of peace

Marla Pierson Lester
September 1, 2006

As she packs soap and toothpaste for MCC to send to families in need, Johanna Sutter recalls the blue flowered fabric and the pink and blue patches of the MCC comforter she received as a teenager in Frankenthal, Germany, in the late 1940s.

"There was a little tag that said 'Mennonite Central Committee — In the name of Christ.' That really impressed me," she said. "I had never heard of anybody doing anything in the name of Christ. This has always stuck with me."

Sutter cherished the comforter, which kept her warm in the room where she and her sister slept — an extra room pressed into service after relatives who had lost their homes moved in with the family.

"I wrapped myself in that comforter and I thought, 'Oh, there are people who don't come to destroy. They come to help people,'" she said.

She kept the tag from the comforter and one from a Christmas bundle she later received. "This really influenced my life and how I look at things," Sutter said.

She became a Mennonite and worked at an MCC children's home in Germany for five years before coming to the United States. She was a schoolteacher for 39 years. Each year, she would take the time to put together 50 Christmas bundles and a couple of hundred school kits.

After she retired, she became even more involved. Today she continues to volunteer part of several days each week at the Material Resource Center in Goshen. She also supervises volunteers when the Material Resource Coordinator is gone.