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#Seminerdian: Findings in a church basement

  • Writer: Rebekah York
    Rebekah York
  • Feb 12, 2020
  • 3 min read

My most recent newsletter promised a blog post depicting the somewhat nerdy findings from the library at Seminario Bíblico Menonita de Colombia (SBMC). When the newsletter came out the other day, I realized I hadn’t posted the pictures yet! Whoops - time has escaped me I suppose. Additionally, as a side note, I have to mention here that am thankful for the friends who have asked about my blog posts (or lack thereof), thereby encouraging me to keep up the site! It is truly a reassurance that people are interested in my "Bogotana life" and are actively looking for updates. So thank you friends (you know who you are!) for incentivizing me to keep up with said posts.


This post is a little different than those I anticipate writing in the future. Normally, I will use this platform to talk about mission in the 21st century with a focus on my findings from and for the global church on what it means to follow Jesus in various contexts. However, I came across some pretty amazing artifacts, research, and books during my first two weeks at SBMC. Thus, I wanted to be able to share pictures with friends, family, and supporters: just a taste of the items that have been stowed away in two small rooms in a church basement in Bogotá, Colombia for years.


By way of background information: when I arrived to Bogotá in early January, one of the first things Santiago (the director of SBMC) had me do was organize and box up the library while I work on my language skills. The library, I have come to find, has a vast collection of books. While most of them are old, all things considered, we have quite the collection! Yet, they were all out of order. The 300s were with the 100s, the reference books were all spread out, and there was not much order to the almost 1000 books. Thus, I was tasked with creating order using the Dewey Decimal system that some of the books already had and boxing them up for easy movement. The picture collage that follows is documentation of just some of the items that made this seminerdian geek out. Hope you enjoy and get just a glimpse of my excitement while coming across these items.


These were two of the first books I came across while organizing. Both Rosenberg's "Nonviolent Communication" and Lederach's "Building Peace" have been both transformative and quite informative in my career development. You can imagine my excitement when I found that they have been translated into Spanish!





This book was also quite the find at SBMC. Willard Swartley was a dear friend of mine and of course, Mary Schertz was my professor at AMBS (plus, we were in a writing group together). A lot of the books I found begged the question: how did this get here and who thought this would be the "perfect" book to have at the seminary?






This is just one of the many Swartley books that this library has translated into Spanish. Unfortunately, much of his newer work is not housed in the Seminary - in English or in Spanish. But that is a project idea for another time.....













I was immediately transported back to my AMBS class entitled 'Anabaptist History and Theology' when I finished organizing this section of books! Though they aren't all translated into Spanish, I must admit I got lost in paging through them.








This is a letter I found from Walter Klassen to Titus Guenther, in which he answers some questions Titus had about (I'm assuming) the translation of a book on just war.














Another exciting find: a book edited by two people who have been important to me at different points in my life. Nancy Heisey was one of my professors in undergraduate who encouraged me as I sought to more clearly articulate the connection between peace studies and theology at EMU. She also helped me immensely with my undergraduate senior research. Daniel was a professor of mine and together we worked on a book project during my time at AMBS. Over the years he has also become a close friend, as we attend the same church in Goshen, IN.









This letter (copy) was carefully placed in a random book and it fell out while I was organizing. I promise I did not write it myself, although felt an immediate connection to the original author. Almost every day for 2 weeks I was "sitting in the library with books piled on the floor all around me." I guess you can you can never be too sure where your letters and writings will end up!








This is what the two rooms looks liked before (and partially during) the process of organization.



This is what the two rooms look like now (at least, before I put all the books in boxes)



And thus concludes the nerdy post of books I found in the library.


 
 
 

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