Services for 96-year-old Edna Gerber will be held at 1 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, August 28, 2016, at Bethel Mennonite Church in Mountain Lake, Minnesota. The church is located at 301 9th Street North.
A private interment will take place at a later date.
Visitation will be at the church the day of the service from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Sturm Funeral Home-Mountain Lake Chapel, is handling the arrangements.
Edna Buller Gerber was born to Peter Buller and Anna (Wiens) Buller Dirks on August 4, 1920 in Chinook, Montana. She is the oldest of six siblings. Edna was baptized at age 13 in Lustre, Montana in the Evangelical Mennonite Church, before moving to Mountain Lake. She learned how to be thrifty during the Great Depression (saving and reusing things), which served her well later in life as a missionary in Africa.
Edna graduated in 1939 from Mountain Lake High School. She also attended Mountain Lake Bible School to extend her knowledge and love of God. She went on to attended Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota, Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois near Chicago, Illinois and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Home Economics from Goshen Collage in Goshen Indiana.
Edna met Ellis in their senior year at Goshen. The two were on their Senior Sneak standing in line to ride horses and began a conversation that lasted more than 66 years. Both Ellis and Edna had a heart for missionary service and a conviction to share the gospel with others. They married in the country “Valley Church” (now Cornerstone Bible) near Mountain Lake on June 21, 1949. Their first home mission assignment was in Dillonvale, Ohio serving through Kidron Mennonite Church, Kidron, Ohio.
In 1953, Edna and Ellis answered the call to serve in the Belgium Congo with Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission AIMM). While serving as missionary teachers in Congo, they had three children, Daniel, Rebecca and Joanna. During their 20 years with AIMM, they lived within the struggle of political upheaval as the Congolese rebelled against the Belgian government. On furlough in 1967, Edna received her second Bachelor of Arts degree in Library Science from Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University-Mankato) in Mankato, Minnesota. Edna had a sense of accomplishment in being able to discourse in five languages.
As a teacher on the mission field, Edna taught whatever courses were needed, such as English and Art. In 1972, Edna spearheaded a student art project of painting African decorations on the exterior walls of the new secondary school in Nyanga. Edna was recently pleased to hear that these paintings are still intact.
Edna was also creative at home. She had a foot-pedal sewing machine and was an excellent seamstress and frequently sewed matching dresses for her daughters and herself. They retired from the mission field in 1973 and settled in Mt. Lake. Edna worked as secretary with Ellis as the manager at the Mountain Lake Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA) office. She and Ellis also served as deacons at the EMB church and were rotating Sunday school teachers for the adult class. She had many hobbies. She was a seamstress, an avid reader, genealogist, secretary of the Cottonwood County Bird Club, “book lady” at Care and Share, an alto in the Mountain Lake German Singers and a member of the quilting guild.
On retirement from MMA in 1988, Ellis and Edna completed a two-year Mennonite Voluntary Service term in Wichita, Kansas. They enjoyed camping and traveling. The joy of her life was her grandchildren and she tried to stay active in their lives.
As Edna and Ellis’ health failed they moved to retirement communities in Mountain Lake and then in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. After Ellis passed away in March of 2015, Edna lived in the memory care unit of Three Links in Northfield, Minnesota to be closer to Becky and Dan.
Edna was preceded in death by her parents, Peter J. Buller and Anna (Wiens); husband Ellis; brothers Harold Buller, Henry Buller and Peter Buller; sisters-law-Gladys (Klassen) Buller, Dorothy (Dave Schrock) and Ruth Gerber and daughter-in-law, Terry (Coleman) Gerber.
She is survived by her brother, Clarence (and Phyllis) in Colorado Springs, Colorado; her sister, Shirley Newman in Mountain Lake; sister-in-law, Anne Buller in Bluffton, Ohio; children, Dan Gerber, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Becky (Gerber) and Rick Ruddy in Cannon Falls and Joanna (Gerber) and Randy Pinkerton in Wichita, Kansas; six beloved grandchildren and many nieces and nephews.