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<\/a>As Jeff Heie is doing now (in 2010), Jim Hershberger defied gender stereotyping from 1990 to 1996, when he was the main caregiver for the three Hershberger children as they grew from preschool to upper-elementary ages.<\/p>\nJim\u2019s wife, Ann, was then a nurse with a master\u2019s degree (she now has a PhD). The couple had served with Mennonite Central Committee for 10 years in Nicaragua. When they returned to the United States in 1990, Ann\u2019s nursing credentials put her in the best position to be the family breadwinner.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was difficult for me [to be a \u2018househusband\u2019 and full-time father],\u201d recalls Jim. \u201cAs a man, I was supposed to be out \u2018hunting and gathering.\u2019 But I now have memories that I wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
He entered CTP in 1994 (one of the program\u2019s first two full-time students) to \u201cre-tool\u201d himself, as he puts it. \u201cI thought it would give me some options in terms of future employment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years later Jim began work in the Harrisonburg Refugee Resettlement Office. He found his conflict transformation training handy when dealing with the school system. One teacher, for example, became frightened when a child recently arrived from Yugoslavia kept drawing pictures of tanks, bombs and people dying. Jim was able to explain that the boy\u2019s own home had been bombed and that people close to the boy had been killed.<\/p>\n
When a hurricane devastated Nicaragua in the fall of 1998, the Hershbergers returned to that country for a year to do relief work sponsored by Mennonite Central Committee.<\/p>\n
Jim next became the pastor of Beldor Mennonite Church in Elkton, Virginia, a village 18 miles east of Harrisonburg. He pastored for nine years, sometimes addressing conflicts within his congregation, before returning to the Refugee Resettlement Program as its director in September 2010.<\/p>\n
When he was with the refugee program in the late 1990s, the clients were mostly Christians from Eastern Europe and Central America. Now (2010), they are mostly Muslims from Iraq. \u201cThis is a chance for area churches to extend hospitality to people of another faith,\u201d Jim says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"