First Mennonite Church's BlauRock Cafe will present an evening of celebrating a vision of world peace expressed in music, prose, poetry, and the words of the Martin Luther King Jr.

The event is at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Jan. 17, in Fellowship Hall in the church.

The evening includes coffeehouse-style entertainment. Amy Lehman Mikesell, Hassan Mosoka and Shahad Aldoori offer reports of conflict and hope from various parts of the world.

Musical performers include Matthew Keeler, Jeff and Marlyce Gundy, Tamara Al-Sammarraie, and One in a Number, The Bluffton Women's Choir.

Bluffton High School students Landon Cluts, Julian and Lucas Harnish, Celeste Stauber and Sara Chappell-Dick will also perform. Other performers include the Neufeld-Weaver family, with poetry readings by Victoria Woods-Yee and Elaine Rich.

This event is a fundraiser for the Iraqi Student Project, which sponsors several Iraqi students to study at Bluffton University. The Iraqi Student Project is a grass-roots effort to help young people acquire the education they need to participate in rebuilding their country. Donations will be taken at the door.

Taking the words of Dr. King: "We have inherited a big house, a great "world house" in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other."

The event is sponsored by the Christian Education and Mission Peace and Service Commissions of First Mennonite Church. Contact Wendy Chappell-Dick, [email protected], 419-303-9769.