Nussbaum, Janet Soldner (1918-2009)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2009 Apr 27 p. 7

Birth date: 1918 Nov 7

text of obituary:

Early mission worker in Colombia dies at 90

By Mennonite Mission Network staff

warren, Ind. — Janet Soldner Nussbaum, one of the first Mennonite missionaries to Colombia, died April 9 at Heritage Pointe. She was 90.

She served in Colombia for more than three decades, then spent four years in Mexico with the Commission on Overseas Mission.

With three other COM workers, she traveled to Colombia in 1945 to begin a ministry on an eight-acre farm near Cachipay.

Out of the Cachipay ministry grew Colombia Mennonite Church, as well as a clinic and an elementary boarding school. Soldner Nussbaum served in both the clinic and the school.

Her students remember Soldner Nussbaum fondly as a music tacher with great talent on the piano and as a nurse who cared deeply about their health.

"For alumni of the school in Cachipay, her life was one of inspiration and discipline," said Guillermo Vargas Rincón, a former student who is now director of Colegio Americano Menno, high school in nearby La Mesa, "For our family, she was one sent from God to give support, comfort and love."

Vernelle Yoder, who served with Soldner Nussbaum in Colombia, said her friend card both for others' physical and spiritual well-being, dealing with aches and pains, quick-spreading childhood epidemics and the homesickness and emotional needs among the children in school dormitories.

Soldner Nussbaum was born on Nov. 7, 1918, to Clinton D. and Gertrude (Lehman) Soldner. She married Tillman L. Nussbaum after her return from Mexico in 1976.

She was a member of First Mennonite Church in Berne, Ind., and graduated from Bethel Deaconess Hospital in Newton, Kan., in 1942 with a nursing degree.

She is survived by a sister, Treva Schaffter of Geneva. She was preceded in death by her husband. Burial was at Spring Hill Cemetery in Warren.