![\"Chester](\"\/\/emu.edu\/now\/is\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2017\/05\/Wengers.jpg\")
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When Chester Wenger ’36<\/strong> became acquainted with Sara Jane Weaver ’42<\/strong>, he found her \u201cso beautiful and loveable I couldn\u2019t resist,\u201d he said with a twinkle in his eye. Something else beguiled Chester. \u201cIt impressed me to see a young woman stand up there teaching the Bible to a whole roomful of children,\u201d holding their rapt attention. A shared interest in spreading God\u2019s story became the bedrock of a love still luminous as the couple, now 99 and 94 and going on 73 years of marriage, banter about their past.<\/p>\n “What better way to celebrate our centennial than to create a special Centennial Alumni Award to recognize persons who have defined the ethos of EMU in a sustained way for a lifetime,” said President Susan Schultz Huxman<\/strong>. “Chester and Sara Jane Wenger were unanimously selected by our committee as alumni who have lived rich lives of service, leadership and faith and defined our mission with integrity and grace for many decades.”<\/p>\n Each had firm foundations in Mennonite communities. Sara Jane grew up in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, where her paternal grandfather and parents ran a grocery store and several Central Market stands. Chester\u2019s father, A.D. Wenger, was named president of Eastern Mennonite School when the boy was 4. The family lived on the Harrisonburg campus during the academic year and returned to their farm in Chesapeake, Virginia, to tend the grapevines when school was out. Both of their mothers were influential Bible teachers.<\/p>\n In 1936, Chester graduated from EMS, which then offered high school and two-year associate\u2019s degrees. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at nearby Bridgewater College. After a year of driving a milk delivery route, Chester returned to Eastern Mennonite School to take advantage of its new offering, an additional year of Bible studies. From childhood, Chester yearned to know the Bible, even in an era when pastors, including his two older brothers, were called by lot or vote and didn\u2019t need theological training. In that 1940-41 school year, he met Sara Jane, a first-year student.<\/p>\n Sara Jane had taught in summer Bible school from the age of 13, traveling as far as Paoli, 60 miles east of Lancaster City, to do so. \u201cI loved to teach,\u201d she said. \u201cI told stories to get their attention and I didn\u2019t want a single child to drop out. I knew each one by name.\u201d<\/p>\n Chester returned to Chesapeake in 1941 and converted an old store into a primary school, part of a Mennonite movement \u201cbecause the country was getting ready for war and we didn\u2019t want our children to learn war,\u201d he said. When Sara Jane graduated in 1942 with an associate\u2019s in elementary education, she joined Chester\u2019s sister Ruth in the two-room schoolhouse and taught the lower grades. \u201cThe local Mennonite community fell in love with her just like I did,\u201d Chester said.<\/p>\n They were \u201cfriends and courting\u201d but not yet engaged. As Sara Jane settled into Chester\u2019s home community, Chester was sent to Grottoes, Virginia, to a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp, a legal alternative to military service for conscientious objectors. He worked for 18 months in soil conservation, then transferred to a center for developmentally disabled children in Vineland, New Jersey. Sara Jane joined Chester in Vineland after their July 1944 marriage. They became house parents for 35 adolescent boys. In 1945, Chester was transferred to Gulfport, Mississippi, to join a CPS hookworm-elimination project. Their first child, Betty, was born there.<\/p>\n After the war, the couple, now with three daughters under 4, settled in Chester\u2019s Chesapeake home community, was asked to move to Ethiopia as educational missionaries. In that Horn of Africa country, they lived at a mission compound with a hospital and school for nurses’ aides in Nazareth, some 60 miles southeast of Addis Ababa. When the government permitted the missionaries to teach Bible in the training school, Chester converted a warehouse into a dormitory and classroom and opened the Dresser Bible School in 1952. Other persons, mostly from EMU, joined the mission team. The Ethiopian Mennonite Church, Meserete Kristos, today numbering close to a half million, emerged from this effort.<\/p>\n While Chester opened schools, Sara Jane homeschooled Betty, Margaret and Jewel. The couple also welcomed two new babies into the family, Chet and Sara.<\/p>\n As their five years drew to a close, Orie Miller, secretary of Lancaster Mennonite Conference\u2019s mission board, asked Chester to use their furlough for seminary studies. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, in 1956.<\/p>\n They returned to Ethiopia with six children, son Mark having been born during their leave. They temporarily lived in Addis Ababa to fill in for the mission director while he took a furlough. Then it was back to Nazareth for Chester\u2019s assignment of starting a training academy for the emerging Ethiopia Mennonite Church. He eagerly anticipated this opportunity. The government gave permission in 1959 to start this secondary school, the Nazareth Bible Academy. Sara Jane organized the library and taught piano and typing. During this term their last two children were born, Phil and Tom.<\/p>\n In 1966, now with eight children and after 17 years of mission, Chester and Sara Jane returned to the United States. Chester became secretary of home ministries and evangelism for Lancaster Mennonite Conference, based in Salunga, Pa., and working with church plantings from Maine to Florida. He worked 13 years in the position, with highlights being initiation of a Paul- Timothy mentorship program and the 1971 creation of Keystone Bible Institutes. Keystone seminars brought in professors from EMU, Goshen and other Anabaptist colleges for a week at a time. \u201cI was concerned that we had no trained seminary people in Lancaster Conference,\u201d Chester said.<\/p>\n For both Sara Jane and Chester, used to living in a compound and sharing mission work and family life throughout the day, the readjustment to life in the States, with compartmentalization of work and home, was a challenge. Chester now spent long hours at an office. Eventually Sara Jane trained to become a remedial reading tutor for children and worked in that profession for 17 years.<\/p>\n In 1981, the couple accepted the invitation to pastor Blossom Hill Mennonite Church in Lancaster. They stepped down in 1991 but still attend.<\/p>\n The Wengers gained attention in 2014 after Chester married their gay son and his longtime partner. The fact that Phil told them about his orientation as a teenager speaks volumes about the couple\u2019s parenting. A respected doctor told Chester and Sara Jane that same-sex orientation was not a changeable trait. \u201cWe walked with our son through a deep valley,\u201d Chester said of the rejection Phil experienced.<\/p>\n In an \u201cOpen Letter to the Mennonite Church,\u201d published in the December 2014 issue of The Mennonite<\/em>, Chester said, \u201cI feel that my act of love in signing a marriage license for our son and his companion was in line with the actions of Peter and Paul who led the church of Christ to welcome the uncircumcised into the fellowship of the family of God.\u201d<\/p>\n Through the ups and downs of their lives, Chester and his \u201cbeloved life companion\u201d Sara Jane have remained a united team. \u201cIn our work, in our home, as parents, in solving problems, in discerning God\u2019s will, we have worked as a twosome,\u201d Chester said in Bearing Fruit<\/em>, the couple\u2019s memoir compiled by daughter Betty Wenger ’67<\/strong> Good-White and granddaughter Deborah Anna Good ’02<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Editor’s note: Seven of Chester and Sara Jane’s children graduated from EMU: Betty Wenger ’67 Good-White, Margaret Wenger ’69 Johnson, Jewel Wenger ’69 Showalter, Sara Wenger ’75 Shenk, Mark Wenger ’79, Philip Wenger ’82, and Thomas Wenger ’82.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Chester Wenger ’36 became acquainted with Sara Jane Weaver ’42, he found her \u201cso beautiful and loveable I couldn\u2019t resist,\u201d he said with a twinkle in his eye. Something else beguiled Chester. \u201cIt impressed me to see a young woman stand up there teaching the Bible to a whole roomful of children,\u201d holding their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":3796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,918],"tags":[714,812,933,934],"class_list":["post-3794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-springsummer-2017","tag-alumni","tag-centennial","tag-chester-wenger","tag-sara-jane-wenger","issues-current-issue","issues-spring-summer-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3794"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3801,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3794\/revisions\/3801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}