2009-08-18 ISSUE:
Paraguayan Mennonite facts
by Mennonite World Conference
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• Mennonite churches have 32,000 members.
• Total Mennonite population is 60,000, or 1 percent of the nation’s people.
• Eight Mennonite conferences officially hosted the MWC assembly—three German-speaking, two Spanish-speaking and three composed of the indigenous Enlhet and Nivacle groups.
• Other Anabaptist groups include Old Colony “horse-and-buggy” Mennonites, Old Order Amish, Beachy Amish and colonies independent of the conferences.
• Mennonite immigrants came first from Canada in 1927, then from the Soviet Union in 1930, again from Russia in 1947 as displaced survivors of World War II, again from Canada in 1948, and then from Mexico beginning in the 1960s.
• Mennonites are said to produce 80 percent of the country’s dairy products.
• Former Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos and his wife, Gloria, attend Raices Mennonite Brethren Church in Asunción.
Mennonites 