A History of the Mennonite Brethren Church, Ja Toews

e he was conducting meetings in the schoolhouse at Hoffnungsfeld. three men entered after the service had begun. Since there were no vacant seats in the room, Voth asked them to come forward and occupy the chairs behind the speaker. After the service, the following conversation took place between these men as they made their exit: "Why did you not take him?" asked one. The other replied: "If what he says is the truth, then we are lost." Later this man accepted Christ and disclosed that they had planned to seize the evangelist, take him to the Canadian-United States border, and send him home to Minnesota." Throughout the settlement (West Reserve) there were individuals and families who had experienced God's forgiveness, but lacked instruction and nurture. Through the ministry of Elder Voth these were strengthened in their faith, and others were won to Christ. These efforts came to visible fruition on May 30, 1886, at Burwalde, when two couples were baptized in the Dead Horse Creek. Two weeks later, four addi- tional converts were baptized. This group formed the nucleus of the first Canadian M. B. church two years later. At the conference in Turner MENN0N1TK BRETHREN COME TO CANADA 155 County (South) Dakota in November, 1886, Elder Voth's report of the first baptism in Manitoba was received with joy and gratitude. Realizing the special needs of this area, the conference asked Voth to visit Manitoba three times the following year with & remuneration of four hundred dollars plus traveling expenses. The faithful preaching and pastoral ministry of Elder Voth laid the foundations for the establish- ment of a church in 1888. Deeply conscious of the fact that periodic visits were inadequate to meet the spiritual needs of the group of believers in the West Reserve, Voth had invited Gerhard Wiebe, an ordained minister of the M. B. Church in Russia, to come to Manitoba and take charge of the work. When Wiebe arrived in April, 1888, the group at Burwalde was organized as a congregation with sixteen members." Although Wiebe served the local congregation well, there still was an urgent need for a "minister-at-large" to meet the challenge of open doors for evangelism and teaching. Elder David Dyck, whom the conference had asked repeatedly to assume this responsibility, finally consented to move to Canada. The long trek from Colorado to southern Manitoba was made on a "prairie schooner." When the Dyck family arrived at Burwalde on July 17, 1895, the young church consisted of eighty-four members. For eleven years Dyck gave effective leadership to the congregation and also engaged in an extensive itinerant ministry. In 1906 he moved to Borden, Saskatchewan, however, to claim a free homestead in that newly established province. Johann Warkentin, a former schoolteacher in the village of Hoffnungsfeld, assumed the responsibility of leadership and gave effective guidance through the next twenty-five years of the