Last month the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) contacted us to invite to join a book launching for the memoir of Marcy (Weber) Ninomiya. Marcy, her husband Akiie, and Naoko from JICA also decided to visit the MCC Cambodia office a few days before and catch up on MCC’s work in the region.

Marcy is a Mennonite nurse from Ontario, Canada who served three terms with MCC Vietnam in the 1960s during the American-Vietnamese war. She worked closely with Dr. Linford Kulp Gehman, who features heavily in her memoir, and who was the grandfather of our 2022-2023 SALT participant, Isaac.

Her story is remarkable and we had trouble putting her memoir down. As a teenager, Marcy became very sick and told God that if she recovered that she’d go to serve as a nurse in Asia. When she recovered, Marcy kept her promise, training to become a nurse and then signing up to serve in Vietnam with Mennonite Central Committee. She told us that she was worried about going to an active warzone but that she put her faith in God and went.

Because my health continued to decline. . . I started bargaining with God. I was not going to die; I would do whatever God’s plan was for me if He spared my life. In my mind, I was going to become a nurse and go to Asia. . . Yes, I was going to get better and go to Asia as a nurse!

In The Power of Change: A Mennonite Girl’s Footprints in Asia, Marcy Ninomiya tells her cross-cultural life story of growing up in a small Mennonite village in Ontario, Canada, and then living in Asia for more than fifty years, first nursing at a Christian run hospital in Vietnam, during the war-where she met her future husband, Akiie-to becoming overseas personnel for humanity development in Japan and Thailand, as well as working with persons with disabilities in Japan, Thailand, and Myanmar-where a unique baking project became the birth of “Marcy’s Cookies.”

With candor, warmth, and a touch of humour, Marcy humbly shares firsthand accounts of what life was like in the places she served and travelled, the events she was impacted by, such as the long and costly Vietnam War, devastating Kobe earthquake, and a tsunami and flooding in Thailand, the inspiring people she met along the way, and her unwavering faith in God and His guidance through it all.

From the back cover; The Power of Change: A Mennonite Girl’s Footprints in Asia

I was planning to join the book launching event but I changed my plans when my father was admitted to the hospital. Two of the Seek project participants, MCC alumni Max Ediger, and Crystal attended the book launching on behalf of MCC Cambodia.