Yonatan Elliot Cole Penner

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YONATAN ELLIOT COLE PENNER

The person you might have known as Elliot or Jonny or M.C. or Yonny, we, in our home, knew as Yonatan.

Yonatan Getaneh Worku was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Because he was born to a very poor mother, likely at home, he had no official documented birthdate. When he was about 3½, his mother died and he and his brother Elijah were left parentless.

Meanwhile, in a home in Steinbach, there was a family of 4 – a mom, a dad (Kim and Bruce) and 2 children (Jesse and Madelaine) – who believed that they could provide a good home for more children, and that their lives (and hopefully the lives of the children who would join their family) would all be richer for it. This opportunity seemed like a “call from God” and we began the paperwork. As we proceeded with the adoption process, not only did we get to name Yonatan (and so he became Yonatan Elliot Cole Penner), but we also got to choose a birthdate – Mar. 11, 1991.

Yonatan became our son legally on Aug. 3, 1995 and arrived in Canada on Dec. 10 that same year. He and Bruce boarded a plane in Addis Ababa where the temperature was +30 and arrived in Winnipeg where we greeted him with warm winter clothes and -30. He knew no English and his life, as he had known it up until then, had completely changed. Not only was the climate new, but he had a stable loving family, a safe home, food to eat, toys to play with, as well as opportunities and choices that until now were impossible for him to even imagine. He learned very quickly. He began to adapt to the language and the rhythms of our life by watching us and playing with Jesse and Madelaine. The next six months probably seemed busy for him. Along with continuing the adjustment to a new life here, he attended Steinbach Christian Preschool and he went to gymnastic classes with Madelaine. Yonatan began Kindergarten in Elmdale in September 1996. He was a capable student, smart, very athletic and creative. He eventually moved on to the Steinbach Junior High school and then graduated from the SRSS in 2009. After high school, he studied at Steinbach Bible College for 1 year. During much of his “growing up years”, Ridgewood EMC was our home church and Yonatan attended Sunday school, Youth and summer camp at Long Bow Lake Bible Camp.

Yonatan was a natural athlete and was very intuitive in his understanding of how he could use his body to his advantage. He participated in a variety of sports (and excelled at most of them) including baseball, hockey, soccer, track and field, basketball, ringette, judo, and badminton.

Yonatan had a gift for learning languages.

Yonatan was a musician. He took piano lessons. He taught himself how to play the guitar (both electric and acoustic). He had a love of the Disney animated movies and their soundtracks. Even as an adult he loved to listen, and sing and watch these movies. We sometimes joked that if any of our children were going to have a Disney fairy-tale themed wedding it was going to be Yonatan.

Yonatan had developed his work skills in a variety of jobs, the first of which was McDonald’s where he started flipping burgers in his mid-teens. He was also employed at E.G. Penner in the flooring department, he worked in carpentry, and most recently was employed at WS Steel. He was a conscientious worker and worked hard at being a good employee.

On Jan. 24, 2006, Yonatan along with his 3 Ethiopian siblings (Beazaiyu, Metakae and Elijah) participated in the ceremony to officially become Canadian citizens. This was a very proud day for him.

Yonatan had a very vivid imagination. It was part of what made him so creative. He could draw and sculpt. He could tell stories. He was a writer and for the last few years he always carried a pencil or a pen and a worn pocket size notebook with him in which he was constantly making notations…notes of ideas and thoughts to help him with his plan to write a novel which turned into a plan for a series of novels. He was a student of knowledge and he researched and read everything obsessively…history, religion, poetry, culture, politics, the Bible, psychology…He loved to learn. He was a seeker of truth and we saw in him the drive to look for (and look at) truth even when he did not like it. He was a philosopher and a debater. He did not let you off the hook when you said something that did not resonate with facts or with other things you had said and he also did not want to be left unchallenged if he had done the same.

He had a soft spot for the weak and vulnerable. These feelings are likely part of what fueled his interest in sponsoring a child through World Vision shortly after he started earning a paycheck… and then led to him adding a second one a little later on.

Yonatan was a very private person and over the years as he grew it became apparent that he struggled with a darkness in his life that he could not or would not share with others. Maybe it was a way for him to maintain some control over his life. He found it difficult to enter into relationships of significance and for long periods of time in his early adulthood he would avoid family times and communication was minimal. Drugs and alcohol became his friends for a time but he, like Solomon of the Bible, found that these did not satisfy, bring meaning, or remove the sadness of life. Several years ago, he with the help of a friend and his stories, found a way to begin taking responsibility for his life, his feelings and his thoughts.

In the last 2 years or so we have watched Yonatan transform. In his Yonatan way, he seemed more at peace. He engaged in enthusiastic, animated and interesting conversations. He still did not attend all our family events, but when he was there you sensed that he was happy to be there. He was learning to understand himself and express his need to be cautious about how far out of his comfort zone he could push himself, and we respected him for that. Through some of the stories he has shared over the last couple of years, we have learned that he had developed some relationships, particularly in the apartment complex in which he lived, which brought joy and meaning to his life and to those he interacted with, and we are grateful for that.

We have many questions – thousands of questions – most of which will likely remain unanswered, at least here on this earth. Why? Why now? What were you thinking Yonatan? Could we have done things differently and would it have made a difference last week when you chose to end your life? And on and on the questions swirl.

However, in the midst of all the questions these are the things we know and have confidence in:

●Yonatan made a conscious and intentional decision while attending SBC, which he spoke to others about, to invite God into his heart and life and chose to be a follower of Jesus.

●God is love – He loves Yonatan, He loves us and because of this we could love Yonatan.

●God is truth – Yonatan sought truth in a way that we have not often seen and we believe that God honours the intentions of those who seek truth by revealing Himself to them.

●Where there is good, God is. God is the author of goodness. As we have heard from Yonatan himself, and as people have told us the stories of their experiences with Yonatan, we hear of some of the good things he did to be a friend, to help someone who was in need, to protect the vulnerable and we understand that God was present there.

Yonatan’s life ended a lot like it began – a bit of a mystery. We know that he chose to close this chapter of the story of Yonatan sometime between the afternoon of Tuesday, Dec. 19 and the morning of Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 at his residence in Steinbach.

He has left behind to grieve about “the things that might have been” and to “remember what was”:

His parents – Bruce and Kim

His siblings – Jesse and Erin and their son Sebastian

Beazaiyu

Madelaine and Matthew Funk

Metakae and her son Kayden

Elijah and Vanessa

Ha Min Ahn

Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins.

He was predeceased by his brother Lucas and his Grandma Bev (both of whom he never met) and by his Grandpa Bill.

We have felt loved and carried at this difficult time by your prayers, your spoken words and messages, your hugs, and your gifts of flowers, food and offers of service.

Arrangements by
Birchwood Funeral Chapel
1-204-346-1030 or 1-888-454-1030.

As published in The Carillon on Dec 22, 2017