Saturday, April 19, 2025 | Country Acres • Page 1
Country Acres Saturday, April 19, 2025
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Volume 12, Edition 05
Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
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Mantels, ministry team install over 700 crosses worldwide BY BEN SONNEK STAFF WRITER
Bill and Carol Mantel have taken up their cross — and left its footprint around the world. For the past 17 years, the Cambridge couple and their Christian Cross Ministries team have installed hundreds of crosses, from the Mantel’s home state of Minnesota to the other side of the globe. “It’s a joy to get another one up,” Carol said. “It’s like, ‘Wow, God, who would dream that, at our age, you’d ask us to put up crosses?’” Today, there are over 700 CCM crosses worldwide, including in Africa,
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Publications The newspaper of today is the history of tomorrow.
Asia, Israel, South America, Slovakia, the Philippines and, of course, the United States. They stand at homes, businesses, mountains and all kinds of locations. “The stories are amazing of how God has used (the crosses) and is still using them,” Carol said. “I could go on and on and on about different testimonies. … Some break your heart, some are joyous, some are in church, some aren’t. They’re all extreme.” The crosses are made of wood, steel or aluminum, depending on the request and what is locally available. Crosses in the Philippines, for instance, are made of stainless steel to prevent salt corrosion. In Minnesota, a friend of the Mantels, John Bones, has welded hundreds of aluminum
This month in the
crosses for CCM and is continuing to do so. CCM planted 75 crosses in 2024, one of them going to Jodi Niblett in Nelson. After her friend, Connie Spanswick, got one for her yard, Niblett had a CCM cross placed behind the barn at her home in memory of her husband, Edward “Ed”, who passed away in 2020. The cross stands 25 feet tall and overlooks the Niblett family farm. “He went to heaven,” Niblett said. “The cross itself is a reminder we lost somebody very special. It’s (also) a reminder every day to be a good Christian, … and we should try hard to be better people.” Niblett eventually wants to put lighting on the cross, and she will soon be adding a flower garden and a bench there. “I think (the Mantels) have an incredibly good mission,” Niblett said. “They were so nice to work with (and) were a blessing to me.”
COUNTRY: Watch for the next edition of Country Acres on May 3, 2025
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The crosses would not likely be where they are today were it not for a car crash in 1994. That day, Bill was stopped at a red light in Cleveland, Ohio. He was in the area to make a sales call, but, at the time, was headed to dinner with an aunt and uncle he had not seen in a decade. His plans — all of them — changed when a truck rear-ended his vehicle, breaking his neck. Bill was rushed to the hospital and had to be resuscitated when his heart stopped. He had a successful surgery about a week later, preventing him from being paralyzed. However, his brain was affected by its time without oxygen, resulting in short-term memory loss, dyslexia and impaired mathematical ability.
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PHOTO BY BEN SONNEK
(Top, left) Bill and Carol Mantel stand in front of a collage of the first crosses they installed April 8 at their home in Cambridge. Christian Cross Ministries was founded by the Mantels after Bill was cured of chronic neck and back pain and painkiller addiction in 2006. PHOTO BY RAE LANZRATH
A cross stands April 14 at the Niblett home in rural Nelson. The cross is a memorial to Ed Niblett, who passed away in 2020.
Mantel page 2
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