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Born in Amsterdam died in Indonesia.

MCC assignment in Nigeria;
MCC assignment in Bangladesh

David G. Rempel (17 November1899 to 27 June 1992) was born in the village of Nieder Chortitza, Chortitza Colony, in South Russia, where his parents Gerhard Rempel (1863-1919) and Maria Pauls (1867-1920) ran a store and grain-hauling business and encouraged their children to pursue higher education. David attended the elementary school in his village, and graduated from the Chortitza Zentralschule (high school). After beginning studies in the School of Commerce in Barvenkovo but then seeing the Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War disrupting his plans to enter the family business, he attended and graduated from the Chortitza Lehererseminar (Teachers’ Training Seminary) in Rosenthal. The situation with roving banditry worsened in the area, and Typhus took both his parents and brother Heinrich. David taught elementary school from 1920 until 1922, when Soviet officials removed him from this position: his brother was a minister. In 1923, David immigrated to Canada with his brothers John and Jacob, later followed by their sister Maria.
After a year in Rosthern, SK, where he began his English studies at the German-English Academy, David went on to complete a BA at Bluffton College, Ohio, and an MA at the University of Wisconsin in 1930. He earned a PhD in history in 1933 from Stanford University; his dissertation was titled “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia: A Study of their Settlement and Economic Development from 1789 to 1914”. Dr. Rempel taught history at San Mateo Junior College (the College of San Mateo) from 1934 until his retirement in 1964, except for three years during World War II when he served as President Eisenhower’s military historian. In 1962, he became one of the first North Americans to obtain access to the Soviet archives in Moscow and Leningrad; here he conducted detailed research on the Tsarist government’s records of settling colonists from the German lands and other areas of Europe in the 1760s, and then focused on the bureaucratic relationship between the Russian State and Mennonite settlers from Prussia during colonization efforts and activities from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century.
In 1930, David Rempel married Laura Kennel (1901-1950); they had two daughters, Sonia and Cornelia, each of whom also earned a PhD (and donated this collection to the MHA). Widowed in 1950, David married a widow Maria Ringelman Cavanaugh (1898-1984) in 1963. For most of his life, David and his family lived in California, but visited his family and friends in Canada frequently.
After his retirement from teaching, Rempel was able to devote more time to studying and writing numerous articles, reviews, and critiques about Russian-Mennonite history. He implored his fellow writers (and “Reviewers, Commentators, Translators, Editors, and Publishers of Mennonite Writings”; see File #21 below) to base their accounts less on long-heard family stories or myths and more on evidence found in records. Dr. Rempel gained his reputation as a distinguished professor of Mennonite history not least by highlighting information gleaned from archival records and insisting on evidence-based accounts of history. He continued to support further scholarship in Russian-Mennonite history, to which he dedicated himself for many fruitful decades. David G. Rempel died at the age of 92 in June 1992 in Menlo Park, California, leaving the Mennonite world a richer legacy of meticulous scholarship.
Rempel’s research into his family history and accounts of his life can be found in the 356-page memoir A Mennonite Family in Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, 1789-1923 published posthumously in 2002 by the University of Toronto Press. His daughter Cornelia Rempel Carlson edited his manuscript.

Ida (Miller) and Sylvan Jay "S. J." Hostetler can duly be called explorers. They began church work in settings in India and Ghana; they pastored Mennonite Church (MC) congregations in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Not daunted by the unknown or difficult, they approached assignments intent to learn, with a spirit of adventure, with warmth toward people.

Born 16 September 1900, Ida died on 5 January 1972. S. J. lived from 7 March 1901 until 7 October 1978. Both were from Indiana; they married 22 August 1924. Parents of one son and two daughters, Ida and S. J. were missionaries in India, 1928-1949, and in Ghana, 1957-1964, during which time they also explored mission possibilities in Nigeria. During S. J's last five years, he was married to Leona Yoder, who earlier served in Ethiopia and Jordan.

Whether at work with different idioms in language study; meeting needs of boarding school boys, of whom one-third were orphans; on preaching tour to scattered villages; fact-finding with missionaries of other denominations; attending to obstacles or hostility that new Christians met; deciding aboutschools for non-Christian girls; or reporting to North American churches, Jay and Ida believed in sharing the Good News. They believed in prayer, practiced humor, adapted with grace, and modeled teamwork.

After work in Madhya Pradesh (Central Provinces), India, the decade of the 1940s was given by Hostetlers to establish a mission in Bihar State. Working with tribal people who were primarily basket weavers, S. J. and Ida rejoiced when ten were baptized in 1941. Twelve years later there were 10 missionaries, 15 full-time Indian workers effective in gaining the confidence of people, and 92 church members.

Ida proved to be systematic in checking Home Bible Studies materials in Ghana; she created a course on the Gospel of Mark for new Christians. S. J. gathered 25 topics into a resource for baptism candidates. During 1958 and 1959 he made five trips to explore the Nigeria field. Convinced of the future in mission, both wrote informative articles, rich with anecdotes, for North American readers.