The Gift of Laughter is a family history memoir, the story of my father’s family. My dad was the fifth of the fifteen children born to Jacob C. and Helena Zimmerman Willems. In 1919, the family moved from a Mennonite community in Saskatchewan, Canada to the raisin country southeast of Fresno in California’s great Central … Continue reading Family

Dear Friends, The book is written, edited and in the process of becoming a print-on-demand book. Friends are putting on a pre-publication book launch next Sunday evening at the Reedley First Mennonite Church in Reedley, California, and I will also be presenting the book to a group at Fresno Pacific University, a Mennonite Brethren school, … Continue reading Update

There is not much of a post this month. I am closing in on the end of the editing of my book, and my brain is unwilling to really think about anything else. I hate this part of writing, the going over and over the text. I went through this with my MA thesis; I … Continue reading Update

This post marks a transition point in this web-book. I am not going to put the rest of the chapters online. What has been posted thus far are things I want to be freely available to anyone who happens upon them through online search. It is my contribution to the larger project of Mennonite history … Continue reading Jacob & Agnes