Mennonite Weekly Review

On my desk is Robert and Myrtle Unruh: A Legacy of Christian Service and Goodwill in Paraguay, 1951-1983, by Gerhard Ratzlaff and Philip Roth, published by Masthof Press, Morgantown, Pa., 2009, 269 pages, $19.95

A labor of love, this book will go right to your heart. Authors Gerhard Ratzlaff of Paraguay and Philip Roth of the United States were assisted by Edwin Neufeld of Paraguay and Erwin Boschmann of Indiana.

The setting is Mennonite Central Committee’s experimental farm in Fernheim Colony, one of three in the Paraguayan Chaco. Three waves of immigrants and refugees came to the Chaco in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. Three decades was a long time for the settlers to struggle.

Some left. The visionary experimental farm signaled a new day — discovering what agricultural secrets lay in the forbidding Paraguayan soil.

Robert and Myrtle Goering Unruh were a matched pair when it came to unassuming inventiveness, persistence, patience and pursuit of excellence — he in agriculture, she in home economics. They were the right people at the right time in the right place. The engine of their faithfulness (26 of 32 years) was their commitment to Jesus Christ. Robert wrote in a letter, “I’ve often wondered whether God instilled in me a love for hard work, open air, farming, etc., because he had a definite place to put me.”

Not given to preaching, they were fully engaged in the life of the church, both stateside and in Paraguay, exemplifying Christian service with youth groups, and using the colony newspaper, Mennoblatt, as a platform. One important column was Myrtle’s, gently admonishing the colonists to also learn from the original inhabitants of the Chaco, the Lengua and Nivacle — like, which herb keeps insects out of the dry beans; which plant makes an excellent glue.

Myrtle created a cookbook, Mit Manna Gespeist (With Manna Fed), which, Amy Thielman said in 2006, “is still up-to-date and valued.” Organized by weeks for a year, each week began with “food for the soul,” a biblical text and reflection. Recipes used locally produced foods. The local high school, young mothers in the colony and indigenous women all benefited from Myrtle’s passion for better nutrition.

The Unruhs were “carried” in various ways by their home congregations, Bethlehem Mennonite Church of Bloomfield, Mont., and Eden Mennonite Church of Moundridge, Kan., as well as the whole MCC constituency, sending whatever was needed: a refrigerator, harnesses, a windmill, a grass-cutting machine. When Myrtle needed glass canning jars, they came, filled — at the Unruhs’ suggestion, because rates were figured on volume, not weight —with dried fruit, brown sugar, vegetable seeds.

Then there were the 309 New Hampshire Red chicks that Robert acquired through the Heifer Project. Soon after, his Mennoblatt column detailed the care of eggs in preparation for shipping: “Eggs should be packed with the round, thicker end up.” And I haven’t even touched on the serendipitous and revolutionary introduction of Buffel Grass.

Candid stories abound. In the late 1960s, artificial insemination came to Chaco cattle. A thermos of high-quality semen from dairy and beef bulls started in Ontario, was added to in Kansas and thence to Paraguay. Meanwhile, Robert and his colleague John Peters were learning. John quotes Bob: “Well, let’s go to the abattoir and examine the female organs after the cow is killed but not yet gutted, [and] then we will know what we’re feeling for.” A cattle industry now thrives.

The book has a rather homespun format. I was distracted by long italic sections, but I understand the authors’ logic. They gathered valuable primary sources — letters and articles from Mennoblatt.

With the 2009 Mennonite World Conference fresh in our memories, I welcome this tender, timely tribute to Robert and Myrtle Unruh, two joyful people we should not forget.

Muriel T. Stackley is co-author, with Edgar Stoesz, of Garden in the Wilderness: Mennonite Communities in the Paraguayan Chaco, 1927-1997.