Series 06 - Cornelia Lehn

Cornelia Lehn was born the youngest of five children to Gerhard G. Lehn (1881-1970) and Sara Ens (1886-1993) on December 15, 1920 in Leonadewka, Ukraine. Cornelia (Nellie) was a journalist, story teller and church worker. She immigrated with her family to Saskatchewan in 1926 where they settled on a farm near Hanley, Saskatchewan. In 1941 the family moved to British Columbia where she was baptised in 1941 in the Greendale First Mennonite Church. After the war she volunteered with Mennonite Central Committee, working at a refugee camp in Gronau, Germany. Upon her return she attended Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg, Bethel College in Newton, Kansas and earned an MA in journalism from the University of Iowa.
She worked for the Commission on Education for the General Conference Mennonite Church (Newton, Kansas) editing Sunday School curriculum. It was here that she decided it was against her conscience to pay the military portion of her taxes. She made her convictions public in 1977.
She wrote a number of books, many of them stories about faithful living even in the face of hardship. These include God Keeps His Promise, Peace Be With You, I Heard Good News Today, The Sun and the Wind, and The Homemade Brass Plate. In 1989 she researched and wrote the history of the Conference of Mennonites in British Columbia entitled, Frontier Challenge. Some of her publications have been translated into other languages. Lehn was well liked and kept up with relationships through letter writing. After her retirement in December 1982, she lived with her sisters and served the Greendale church in Chilliwack. She died July 2, 2005.