Press Release -  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ephrata Mennonite School is happy to announce the kickoff of its Capital Campaign project. 

Since 1946 Ephrata Mennonite School has provided a Christian education for over 2,000 children. In the last ten years we have experienced an 80% increase in enrollment. We’ve vastly outgrown our aging campus and have forced us to rely on temporary modulars.  We need a facility that meets the needs of our students so that we can continue the work of teaching and discipling the next generation. 

We are currently celebrating the purchase and closing on our new land location at 635 Stevens Road, Ephrata that was completed on Thursday, October 7, 2021. We are anticipating starting construction in the Spring of 2022 with a targeted completion date of August 2023.

The Campaign aims to raise $12 million to support the purchase of land and the new building. We have currently raised $7.5 million through the generosity of our community. 

For more information about this project or if you wish to donate, please visit our website: www.ephratamennonite.org/build

School Contact:

Tonya Good, Community Relations Coordinator

tonya.good@ephratamennonite.org

717-738-4266 ext. 212

Ephrata Mennonite School is on a 2-Hour Delay for Thursday, September 2.

Come Celebrate…

Celebrating the goodness of God by establishing altars is a recurring theme in the Bible. Especially in the Old Testament, the stories are told of God’s people taking time to gather together and build an altar as a way of remembering and marking what God had done in their story. In one well known instance, recounted in Genesis 12, the Lord said to Abram:

Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation...in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed...To your offspring I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent...And there he built an altar to the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. (ESV) 

In this passage God calls Abram to what must have surely been a scary venture, leaving his father’s house and his family, in an act of faith in God’s great promises to him. That faith in God’s promise to use Abram to bless, for generations, those who came after him, provided the impetus for Abram to obediently step into the calling God placed on his life. After reaching Canaan, God again appeared to Abram to give him the land he promised. As a way to memorialize what God did, Abram pitched a tent and built an altar. 

We are really excited to take inspiration from this story. And in a small way, our current journey, with regard to land acquisition and a new campus that will also provide a place that will be a blessing to future generations, mirrors that of Abram’s. And likewise we are pleased to also “pitch a tent” and gather together as God’s people to also “build an altar” to honor God’s goodness in our story.

On Thursday evening, October 21, at 5:30 PM we will be hosting a celebratory banquet, on the land God gave to EMS, at 651 Stevens Road. (This event will take the place of our annual banquet.) Tents for Rent will be erecting a large heated tent, dinner tables, lights, etc. on the premises.  Big John Nolt’s will cater the event. 

We will gather as a people to exult in the goodness of God by “breaking bread” together. Among other ceremonial markers and “altars,” the program will include a time of specific prayer between the seller, First United Methodist Church of Ephrata, and the Ephrata Mennonite School community. We are excited because we believe in faith that greater things are yet to be done! Please make plans to come celebrate with us. As before for our banquets, we will use a ticketing system on Eventbrite (https://ephratamennonite.eventbrite.com). 

 Mr. Joshua Good

Administrator

Ephrata Mennonite School will be closing at 12:30PM today. All after school activities are canceled.

Taanks for supporting the Senior Class of 2022. Here are the results from the 5K.

The EMS Board is continuing to move the campus expansion plans forward. We have made significant progress, and at approximately $800,000 raised, we are nearly halfway to what we need to close on the land later this year. Currently, the board has settled on a two story building design (rather than the three story). And Hoover Building Specialists is pricing out the work, while we continue to push through the site-planning work led by Pioneer. Because we made some site changes to make the project more economical (reducing building square-footage, changing some elevations, etc), it has pushed back our closing date on the land until the fall of this year. Please continue to pray that the site work and building planning go well. Also please pray that God would provide a Director of Development to lead the fundraising efforts over the next several years.

As the temperatures drop here in Ephrata, PA, the EMS Seniors are making final preparations to leave for Nicaragua and enjoy 90 degree weather! You can follow their trip at http://ems2020seniortrip.blogspot.com/. Keep them in your prayers not only in travel, but even more that they would see God's heart for the people they will meet.